They're not considered white by the locals until they lose their accent. White is what you're considered by the relevant whites under discussion, not a meaningful physical category. Mediterranean-bordering, Irish, and Slavic people have just gotten to be white in the US fairly recently.
"The locals" is an odd term. I lived in New Mexico, where some of people who are raised in Spanish speaking households trace their local ancestry back to before the founding of the US.
The Hispanics of Puerto Rico were there before the US took it over as part of the Spanish–American War.
These Hispanics are more local than the new-comer English-speaking people, no?
