<P> 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 . Thirty - one of these territories applied for and were granted statehood . 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 when 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 . </P> <P> Territories have always been a part of the U.S. According to federal law, the term "United States", when used in a geographical sense, means "the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the United States Virgin Islands". Since political union with the Northern Mariana Islands in 1986, they too are treated as a part of the U.S. An executive order adopted in 2007 includes American Samoa in the U.S. "geographical extent" as reflected in U.S. Department of State documents . </P> <P> The U.S. has five territories that are permanently inhabited: Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands in the Caribbean Sea; Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands in the Marianas archipelago in the western North Pacific Ocean; and American Samoa in the South Pacific Ocean . </P> <P> Approximately 4 million people in these territories are U.S. citizens . American Samoa has about 32,000 non-citizen U.S. nationals . Under U.S. law, among the territories, "only persons born in American Samoa and Swains Island are non-citizen U.S. nationals ." American Samoans are under the protection of the U.S., with the ability to travel to the U.S. without a visa . </P>

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