Eyeing an oil refinery restart, easing immigration restrictions, and other territorial needs, U.S. Virgin Islands representatives in Washington, D.C., have expanded outreach to President-elect Donald Trump and other soon-to-be empowered Republicans, Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. said Wednesday morning.
Although Virgin Islanders overwhelmingly elect Democrats, courting Republicans in Washington was nothing new, Bryan, a Democrat, told board members of the Public Finance Authority.
“We always had a Republican bias in our representation just because, if you remember, Trump was president when I started the administration,” he said. That said, Bryan acknowledged he did not know what policies Trump may enact and what consideration the Virgin Islands may get.
“I’m feeling positive now, however, Jan. 20, I think it is, when he’s sworn in, we’ll know exactly which side we’re on,” Bryan said.
Lobbyists plan to update the Public Finance Authority in February about their progress courting Trump and other Republicans, he said. The territory’s primary lobbyists are Republicans, and a new, well-connected lobbyist may come on board soon.
“We have a new lobbyist that is courting us that has already given us access to Republicans in the administration — but he’s a little pricey so, I’ll try to negotiate him down to a reasonable sum,” Bryan said. “He’s worth the money, I think. Not the dollars he wants, but … it might cost us a little bit more this year.”
Bryan said his recent trip to Washington included making connections with D.C. insiders and members of Congress. He also coordinated with Delegate to Congress Stacey Plaskett.
“We had a lengthy meeting with her and went through all the issues that remain pertinent on the hill,” Bryan said. “It’s looking good so far.”
National reports from Washington have said Trump has noted former detractors were eager to get on his good side. It has also been reported that Trump may seek to punish a list of critics and perceived enemies. It was not clear if that would include Plaskett, who was a key figure in Trump’s 2021 impeachment.
Bryan also met with Resident Commissioner Jennifer Gonzalez while in Washington — a Republican who represents Puerto Rico in Congress.
“We had a good conversation with her. She is a big Trump supporter,” he said. “We have known her for a while so when we go to D.C., we usually invite her to dinner with the other territories.”
Bryan and some members of the PFA board of directors said Trump’s nomination of former New York congressman Lee Zeldin to run the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency would offer welcome relief for St. Croix’s long-troubled oil refinery. Trump promised Zeldin would promote swift deregulation.
Bryan has championed reopening the refinery, saying the EPA “maliciously and illegally” shut down the plant after failed restart attempts spewed airborne plumes of oil and other contaminants onto people’s homes nearby.
A less-stringent EPA might help the refinery on St. Croix restart, he said, adding that there was “a lot of interest” in getting the refinery operating again.
“Things should start to look a lot better for the refinery on the hill. But there’s still a lot of legal things to work on,” Bryan said. “You can’t say you’re going to turn on the refinery tomorrow.”
While oil refining may fall in line with the incoming administration’s ethos, the territory may have more difficulty persuading Trump and other Republicans to ease rules governing immigration to the Virgin Islands.
Bryan said he and the territory’s Washington representation were working to reverse a 1970s change in law that disallowed H1 visa workers for the Virgin Islands. At the time, Bryan hypothesized the restriction made sense as a way to limit outsiders looking for work in the territory as a way to save jobs for locals.
“We got to get that little piece changed. It’s not a big thing,” he said, adding it would take congressional action, however.
Bryan said in 2023 that the territory needed at least 5,000 new workers to keep up with an expanding tourism sector and efforts to rehabilitate and rebuild structures damaged by the 2017 hurricanes. He said undocumented people — which Trump has vowed to arrest and deport — could make up an important part of the workforce.
Bryan said he wasn’t sure how many undocumented people were in the territory but said rhetoric to capture and detain the undocumented population may be overstating the federal government’s actual abilities.
“They don’t really have any place to put people. They don’t have the capacity. I mean, all the jails, all the detention centers are already overflowing with people. So it’s not just a matter of rounding people up. People, even though they are not citizens, they still have to have due process,” Bryan said. “We have a lot of undocumented Haitians, Colombians, Venezuelans, and Dominican Republic.”
Bryan had hoped to ease restrictions on workers from other Caribbean states. From as far back as 2015, the territory has been working to make Virgin Islands life less stressful for undocumented residents, many of whom arrived as children.
“We have people who have been here, been in school, for their entire lives. They came here as kids, undocumented. Went to high school. They graduated. And now they can’t do anything. So, we’re making it easier for them to get IDs, to get licenses, to get health cards so that we can have a safer work environment,” Bryan said. “We’ve been making it easier for undocumented people to live in the territory. Just because they live here every day. Sometimes they are victimized because they are undocumented. We have some terrible stories that people are essentially enslaving people because they are undocumented.”
In 2022, an Estate Contant guesthouse manager admitted to importing undocumented immigrants to staff her brothel.
