Why the United States Should Care More About its Overseas Territories

 

Photo by Joceyln Augustino/FEMA

Back when I was in high school, I remember being on vacation in St. John, one of the U.S. Virgin Islands, and noticing two distinct sections of the island: one with lavish, golden hotels and beaches, and one with litter, squalid conditions, and people laid upon the sidewalk like forgotten plastic. The first part was reserved for tourists, while the second part was for the locals.

            The United States of America, being the most powerful nation in the world, should have the ability to make life in its territories comparable to life in many countries. And yet, conditions on these islands are comparable to, if not worse than, the Caribbean nations. This is not an issue of competence, but rather an issue of complacence. The United States exploits and ignores its island territories, which can be seen most clearly in the phenomena of overtourism, mismanagement of toxic waste, and disastrous post-hurricane conditions.

            The most obvious question that comes to mind when hearing about this is, “why should we concern ourselves with these islanders when we have our own to take care of?” The answer to this is simple: they are our own. As the United States government owns and profits off these territories, it follows that the Unites States has a responsibility to these territories to the same extent to which it has a responsibility to the states. Since the government has insisted on spending taxpayer money across the states for various services, it is only fair to extend that spending to our territories as well.

            Overtourism can be defined as tourism of an area to the point that it becomes actively harmful to the environment and the local population, which is how this 2021 peer-reviewed paper uses the term. The paper finds that Caribbean islands that do not have their own government, such as U.S. territories, experience far more overtourism than do independent islands. The authors attribute this fact partially to “tourism specialization”, which suggests that these territories, as they are not independent governments, are able to ignore issues that the locals care about, such as education or poverty, and instead specialize on servicing tourists.

            According to this article, overtourism can have the following effects: litter, damage to public spaces, tourist traps overcrowding businesses designed for locals, and the degradation of public spaces such as museums. These effects can increase the price of living for locals and lessen the spaces they have access to. These issues are, then, largely ignored by the U.S. government, as it makes a profit from the tourism industry that is slowly destroying these islands.

            However, tourism is not the only way that these islands are being neglected. This article showcases how these territories are often used as dumping grounds for waste created on the mainland. It also demonstrates how this is not a recent issue, as can be seen from the nuclear testing that occurred on Bikini Atoll and the Marshall Islands in the 1940s, which resulted in radioactivity worse than Chernobyl in some areas. This nuclear testing displaced locals who had been living on the land for a long time.

            The relationship between environmental crime in an area and the health of the local community is well established by this point. Therefore, the higher density of illegal waste dumping in the Caribbean territories has undoubtedly caused much suffering among the people of these islands. The environmental impact of this waste is also cause for concern, as it can negatively impact many industries these people may rely on. The fact that green crime takes place so frequently in these territories heavily suggests that the United States does not do a thorough enough job of properly enforcing environmental law in these territories.

            An argument against neglect from the U.S. could be made by citing the U.S. money funneled into the U.S. Virgin Islands alone through grants and other means, which adds up to about 500 million dollars in 2026 alone, and a staggering 10.6 billion dollars in 2025. This does sound like enough support, but the raw numbers do not show the real, on-the-ground experience of those suffering from hurricane damage still unaddressed years after the fact. This 2022 textbook chapter is very thorough in showing the damages of the islands.

            After Hurricanes Irma and Maria hit the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, the territories were devastated. Hundreds of thousands of houses were destroyed. The death count from hurricane-related damages is estimated in the thousands. Students showed high rates of mental disorders as school systems attempted to continue. Unemployment skyrocketed. As well, both the agriculture and tourist economies were in ruin, leaving them largely unable to provide money for the local people.

Aid certainly did arrive for the islands, but it was limited in what it could accomplish through poor staffing and a lack of funds. Years after the fact, blue tarps were still raised instead of actual buildings throughout the territories. This is a level of neglect that would be unheard of in the states. The United States government needs to put more care into these neglected territories so that they can recover from these disasters in a reasonable timeframe and get back to business. Furthermore, more care needs to be placed into ensuring that the damage of these disasters is limited when they hit.

             The territories of the most powerful governments on Earth should not look like third-world countries, and yet they do. The state of the U.S. territorial islands is one caused by neglect, specifically the neglect of tourist, ecological, and hurricane damage alike. If these islands are to be raised to a better standard of living, the U.S. government needs to rise to the occasion and intervene on the same level it does for states.