Virgin Islands Americans are persons from the U.S. Virgin Islands or British Virgin Islands who reside in the continental United States, or continental Americans of Virgin Islands heritage.
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. However, due to cultural affinities with the Anglophone Caribbean, 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 U.S. 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.
The population of immigrants of British Virgin Islands origin in the United States is also difficult to determine, as they are not specifically counted in the U.S. Census, but grouped with other Caribbean British Overseas Territories as "British West Indies."
Famous quotes containing the words virgin, islands and/or american:
“Why is it every careerist tries to turn his mother into a Madonna—to prove his intellect is a virgin birth, papa had nothing to do with it? It’s the sign of the misogynist.”
—Christina Stead (1902–1983)
“Consider the islands bearing the names of all the saints, bristling with forts like chestnut-burs, or Echinidæ, yet the police will not let a couple of Irishmen have a private sparring- match on one of them, as it is a government monopoly; all the great seaports are in a boxing attitude, and you must sail prudently between two tiers of stony knuckles before you come to feel the warmth of their breasts.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In a moment when criticism shows a singular dearth of direction every man has to be a law unto himself in matters of theatre, writing, and painting. While the American Mercury and the new Ford continue to spread a thin varnish of Ritz over the whole United States there is a certain virtue in being unfashionable.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)