Stateside Virgin Islands Americans


Stateside Virgin Islands Americans are West Indian Americans who hold US citizenship and who have migrated from the U.S. Virgin Islands to the continental United States, and their descendants.
Persons born in the U.S. Virgin Islands are United States citizens, and as a result do not go through the legal immigration procedures a typical West Indies immigrant would. U.S. Virgin Islanders in the U.S. are considered part of the Caribbean American immigrant community.
It is difficult to determine how many Virgin Islanders reside in the United States. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, there are 15,014 of U.S. Virgin Islands ancestry residing in the continental United States. However, a count of American residents with "U.S. Virgin Islands ancestry" excludes most U.S. Virgin Islands-born immigrants in the United States. Because of a high incidence of inter-Caribbean migration throughout the 1960s and 1970s, most native-born Virgin Islanders today are one or two generations removed from other Caribbean islands and would not necessarily define themselves as having "U.S. Virgin Islands ancestry." For example, Tim Duncan is a St. Croix native with Anguillian ancestry.

Demographics

Virgin Island Americans includes Americans with ancestry from both the US Virgin Islands and British Virgin Islands, together numbering about 25,000. Majority of Virgin Island Americans are of black Afro-Caribbean descent, many of whom descend from African slaves brought to the islands in the colonial area. A large portion descends from black or mixed race immigrants who came from other parts of the Caribbean including Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Trinidad and Tobago, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and many smaller countries in the Lesser Antilles.
Many Virgin Island Americans concentrate in areas with a large overall Caribbean population, including areas like New York, Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

Notable people

Actors