Territories of the United States | Wikipedia audio article
Channel: Subhajit Sahu
Date: 2018-11-18

Territories of the United States are sub-national administrative divisions directly overseen by the United States Federal Government. Unlike U.S. states and Native American tribes which exercise limited sovereignty alongside the federal government, territories are without sovereignty. The territories are classified by whether they are incorporated and whether they have an "organized" government through an Organic Act passed by the U.S. Congress.The U.S. has sixteen territories in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. Five of the territories are permanently inhabited and are classified as unincorporated territories — they are American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The other eleven territories are small islands, atolls, and reefs with no native or permanent population. Of those eleven, only one is classified as an incorporated territory. Two territories (Bajo Nuevo Bank and Serranilla Bank) are administered by Colombia.
Historically, territories were created to govern newly acquired land. Most territories eventually attained statehood. Other territories at some point administered by the U.S., such as the Philippines, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau, eventually became independent countries.
Many organized incorporated territories of the United States existed from 1789 to 1959. The first were the Northwest and the Southwest territories, and the last were the Alaska Territory and the Hawaii Territory. Of these, 31 territories applied for and were admitted as states. In the process of organizing and promoting territories to statehood, some areas of a territory lacking sufficient development and population densities were temporarily orphaned from parts of a larger territory after residents voted on whether to petition Congress for statehood. For example, when a portion of the Missouri Territory became the state of Missouri, the remaining portion of the territory, consisting of all the states of Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota, most of Kansas, Wyoming, and Montana, and parts of Colorado and Minnesota, effectively became an unorganized territory.U.S. territories tend to have infrastructure and telecommunications inferior to the United States mainland; for example, American Samoa's Internet speed was found to be slower than several Eastern European countries. Poverty rates are also higher in the territories than in the states.