West Indian immigrants

Significance:Although West Indians have made up a relatively small part of immigrants who have come to the United States, notable West Indian communities have arisen in New York and Florida. Their places of origin are close to the southernmost part of the United States, and they have a comparatively long history of immigrating to the United States.

The many small countries of the Caribbean make up the West Indies. There are some variations in the use of the term “West Indian,” but the expression most frequently describes people in the English-speaking Caribbean islands. This region encompasses inhabitants of Anguilla, Antigua, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, St. Kitts, St. Lucia, Montserrat, Trinidad, St. Trinidad, and the British and US Virgin Islands. The term sometimes also encompasses people from Bermuda, which is north of the Caribbean, and Guyana, which is on the South American mainland. Moreover, many immigration authorities also include people from the French West Indies, notably Guadeloupe and Martinique, under the category “West Indian.” Information presented here describes immigrants from both the English and French West Indies.

Although West Indians have constituted one of the smaller immigrant groups in the United States, they have a fairly long history of immigration as a result of the geographic proximity of the Caribbean. Between 1900 and 1920, immigrants from the West Indies living in the United States increased from only about 10,000 to more than 53,000. One of the best-known West Indians who immigrated during this period was the black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey, who arrived in the United States in 1916 and settled in New York City, which was already home to the largest concentration of immigrants from the West Indies in the United States. In 1920, close to one-half of the West Indians in the United States lived in New York. Other smaller but significant communities of West Indians lived in New Orleans and Miami, Florida.

The West Indian population of the United States grew to nearly 79,000 by 1930. It then dropped dramatically to around 26,000 in 1940 and rose back up to about 38,000 in 1950. The number of West Indians increased over the 1950s to just over 100,000 in 1960 and then to 165,000 in 1970. The numbers of West Indians again increased rapidly after the early 1970s. By 1980, the West Indian immigrant population was close to 377,000. In 1990, the total reached 697,000, 1 million in 2000, and over 1.1 million in 2014. By then, West Indians were more likely to be categorized under the wider classification of Caribbean immigrants; the largest self-identified immigrant groups from the West Indies as of that year originated from Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Grenada, the Bahamas, and Dominica, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. By 2018, the West Indian immigrant population in the United States exploded to 2,992,800. When other Caribbean nations are included in the number of West Indian immigrants, that number rose to 4.5 million in 20219, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

Jamaicans made up the single-largest West Indian group in the United States, numbering an estimated 706,000 in 2014. In 2019, the number of Jamaicans rose to 772,000, although, with the inclusion of other Caribbean nations in the numbers, Cuba and the Dominican Republic overtook Jamaica as having the largest West Indian immigrant populations. New York and Florida were home to 62 percent of West Indian nonimmigrants in 2019. Most of New York's West Indian nonimmigrants lived in the New York City metro area. Most of Florida’s West Indians settled in the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood-Pompano Beach metropolitan area and the Miami-Hialeah metropolitan area.

West Indians worked in a variety of occupations during the early twenty-first century. They were especially well represented in medical and health services. About one of every ten West Indians in the American labor force worked as a hospital or other institutional attendant in 2007, and nearly one in twenty worked as a nurse. As of 2018, 21 percent of the West Indian immigrant population held a Bachelor’s degree or above.

Most West Indians are of African ancestry, but some are descendants of people from India who settled in the Caribbean during the era of the British Empire. The Indian presence in the Caribbean is most evident in Trinidad and Tobago. Immigration studies of this group are often concerned with the influence of racial prejudice on their adaptation to life in the United States. Relations between African Americans and black West Indians have generally been good, but some tensions have arisen between members of the two groups.

Bibliography

Alvarez, Julia. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books, 1991.

Foner, Nancy, ed. Islands in the City: West Indian Migration to New York. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.

“Immigrants from the West Indies in the United States.” Immigration from the West Indies iDod Fact Sheet, George Mason University Institute for Immigration Research, 2018, https://d101vc9winf8ln.cloudfront.net/documents/38534/original/Immigrants‗from‗the‗West‗Indies‗iDod‗Fact‗Sheet.pdf?1613488898. Accessed 14 Mar. 2023.

Jie Zong, and Jeanne Batalova. "Caribbean Immigrants in the United States." Migration Information Source, Migration Policy Institute, 14 Sept. 2016, www.migrationpolicy.org/article/caribbean-immigrants-united-states. Accessed 13 Oct. 2016.

Lorenzi, Jane, and Jeanne Batalova. “Article: Caribbean Immigrants in the United States.” Migration Policy Institute, 7 July 2022, https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/caribbean-immigrants-united-states. Accessed 14 Mar. 2023.

Vickerman, Milton. Crosscurrents: West Indian Immigration and Race. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Waters, Mary C. Black Identities: West Indian Immigrant Dreams and American Realities. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999.