THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

But like the US Virgin Islands, it is neither a state nor its own nation. And with the Pumpkin Pretender in the White House and both houses of Congress controlled by Republicans, the possibility of any of them getting the necessary disaster relief and reconstruction aid is practically nil.

After Hurricane Irma and then Maria tore through the Caribbean islands, the United Nations swung into action with helicopters, food drops and multimillion-dollar recovery plans.

But even though both Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands were decimated by the hurricanes, they couldn’t call the U.N. — an expert in disaster relief — for help.

The islands are U.S. territories with their own governors but no voting representation in Congress, so they must turn to the United States in times of need, even if they aren’t on many Americans’ radar.

“The governor of Puerto Rico can certainly not call the U.N. for help. Puerto Rico’s foreign relations are handled as if Puerto Rico were fully domestic, a state like any other,” said Christina Duffy Ponsa-Kraus, a Puerto Rico expert who teaches legal history at Columbia Law School.

Except they aren’t states like any other.

“That is the awfulness of being a territory,” said José Fuentes, chairman of the Puerto Rico Statehood Council. “You have no political power within your own government and you don’t have the ability to do anything internationally because everything has to go through the U.S. State Department.”

The United States might have been more willing to intervene more aggressively if the two-hurricane ravaged territories actually were foreign countries, Ponsa-Kraus said.

“The territories are marginal, they are invisible, and they have no voice in Washington because you need a vote to have a voice,” she said. “You’ve got these populations of American citizens living in these territories, but most Americans don’t understand that they are American citizens.”

If Puerto Rico, where the hurricane death toll now stands at 51, suffers from an invisibility problem in the minds of many Americans, then multiply that many times over for the U.S. Virgin Islands, with its population of only about 110,000.

While the media is now focused on Puerto Rico’s destroyed power grid and ongoing shortages of food and water, many U.S. Virgin Islands residents are facing similar deprivations but without the attention. Power has been restored to less than a third of St. Thomas residents, 16 percent of St. Croix customers, and hardly anyone on St. John — although the power authority hopes to re-electrify portions of Cruz Bay by the end of the week.

“Why are people who live in the U.S. Virgin Islands not as important as people who live in other places?” asked Stacey Plaskett, the USVI representative in Congress. “Our lives have been forever changed and we need support.”

Many schools are still too damaged to reopen. Others were destroyed or are still in use as shelters. Limited curfews are still in effect. “We lost much of our economy. Many of our resorts are destroyed, and tourism accounts for about 50 percent of the GDP. Many resorts will be lost for this year and next year,” Plaskett said.

The islands already had an unemployment rate of about 12 percent before the hurricanes hit, she said.

Puerto Rico has several times held plebicites on the question of statehood and up to now none have received a majority. That might be very different in the future if not for the presence of Republicans in Congress who know they are creating an island of Democrats. As for the US Virgin Islands, maybe they can convince Denmark to buy them back.