Caribbean annexation

The **Caribbean annexation** was the decades long incorporation of the remaining islands of the Caribbean into the United States of America, which were all admitted to the Union as states as of 2067.

## Background

### **Renewed U.S. Territorial Expansion and Guyana**

At the time Puerto Rico achieved statehood, the US had also begun to see an economic boom in space. Equatorial launch positions were a priority for the United States, and while sea-based launch platforms in the Pacific worked, they came with serious logistical challenges. Securing land based launch sites were a priority for the United States, and thus the US began to explore ways to deepen ties between the US and Caribbean nations, particularly Guyana. Guyana was historically tied to the Untied States, English speaking, geographically close, and had the majority of its population living and working in the U.S. In 2022, the US began the construction of a new launch complex in southern Guyana and entered into a "Free Association" with the South American nation. Guyana would effectively allow the US to provide its national defense, in exchange Guyanans were given Free Travel between the United States and the home country. This was partly in response to Russian efforts to secure similar launch sites in French Guiana. The regular shipment of goods and materials between Guyana and the mainland United States, led to an increase in US trade and tourism across the Caribbean, which ballooned even further after the beginning of Mars Colonization. By 2024 the region had joined the Central American Free Trade Zone (CAFTA), with Cuba joining as an observer state.

### **The Flood and the Labor Shortage**

By the time the South Greenland Ice Sheet calved, the US had already been dealing with waves of Caribbean refugees fleeing to the mainland after almost every hurricane season going back at least to the 2008 Hurricane Season. Anticipating the devastation of rising sea levels, many Carribean countries declared total evacuations to the American Mainland or Guyana. Those that remained were already being set upon by increasingly devastating hurricanes that left many villages uninhabitable, flooding major cities with domestic refugees. After sea levels rose beyond 7 meters above pre-Flood Levels, hundreds of thousands of refugees fled in an armada of makeshift rafts.

By 2031 the Price administration's immigration reforms allowed Caribbean refugees to register for citizenship with no wait period and automatically receive guest worker status if they weren't interested in becoming citizens. These reforms were followed by the most devastating hurricane in living memory to hit the Carribean, Hurricane Francesca, prompting the US to deploy the Navy to handle the evacuation of the remainder of Cuba and Hispaniola. The governments across the Caribbean islands had largely collapsed leaving the US to administer Martial Law. In 2033, President Price unilaterally annexed the smallest islands who's populations all had to be relocated to the US. Congress passed an annexation bill for Cuba and Hispaniola shortly thereafter. Only Jamaica had a semi-functioning government left that was able to negotiate a treaty of accession. Roughly a quarter of Caribbean refugees resettled in Guyana, and rather than risk losing potential additions to the workforce, the US negotiated Guyana's annexation and path to statehood in 2035. The US also agreed to buy the now sunken island territories of the Dutch and the British as a means of easing the exchange of relief to those nations.

### **WWIII and the Treaty of Geneva**

During the latter portion of the Third World War, the US launch site in Guyana was attacked by French forces as part of a last ditch effort by the Turks to delay the US ability to assist the Poles in Europe. After the US demanded French Guiana be handed over to the US. A treaty of ascession was negotiated with the government of Suriname, thus uniting the Guyanas under a single state.