The trouble with the PRs wasn't that they were illegal aliens but that they were poor and many were on welfare. They didn't take care of their apts and property as did the whites. Landlords said they were destructive and didn't respect their apts. Bedsheets in the windows, unswept sidewalks, loud foreign music, weird cooking odors. Kids running the streets and in the parks at all hours. Crime seemed to follow them so people feared them. The poor blacks would soon follow and the neighborhood would turn into a slum/ghetto (or so the story went) so the whites sold out and moved.
Somewhere along the way GP did a reversal and is now heavily Polish and other northern Europeans. When I was last there, about 10 yrs ago, I saw no blacks at all and no more than a handful of what looked like Hispanics.
As for me, I didn't care even at that tender age and made friends with Carmen and her brother Gary who moved in on our block. They spoke poor English at the time but learned quickly. Both of their parents worked. They were not on Welfare/Home Relief, whatever it was called back then. My mother wasn't happy about that at all. But she was never happy anyway. I was not allowed to bring Carmen into our apt. My mother feared she had lice. When another neighbor told me that PRs ate their babies, cooked them in pots on the stove( what a thing to tell a 10 yr old) I knew it was all BS, that the people there just didn't like PRs but at that time I didn't know what racist or bigotry was. I didn't know there was a name for it. Carmen and I remained friends until we moved to Queens.