Caribbean Americans or West Indian Americans are Americans who trace their ancestry to the West Indies in particular or Caribbean in general. Caribbean Americans are a multi-ethnic and multi-racial group that trace their ancestry further in time to Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. As of 2016, about 13 million — about 4% of the total U.S. population — have Caribbean ancestry.

The Caribbean is the source of the United States' earliest and largest island immigrant group and the primary source of growth of the islander population in the U.S. The region has exported more of its people than any other region of the world since the abolition of slavery in 1834.

The largest Caribbean immigrant sources to the U.S. are Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Haiti, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and Barbados. U.S. citizens from Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands also migrate to the US proper (known as Stateside Puerto Ricans and Stateside Virgin Islands Americans, respectively).

In 1613, Juan (Jan) Rodriguez from Santo Domingo became the first non-indigenous person to settle in what was then known as New Amsterdam.

The West Indian migration to the modern United States began in the colonial period, when many West Indians were imported as slaves to the British colonies of North America.

First people from West Indies who arrived in the United States were slaves brought to South Carolina in the 17th century. These slaves, many of whom were born in Africa, number among the first people of African origin imported to the British colonies of North America. Over time, Barbadian slaves would make up a significant part of the Black population in Virginia, mainly in the Virginia tidewater region of the Chesapeake Bay. The number of enslaved Africans bought from the Caribbean increased in the 18th century, as the British colonies of Southeast of North America (part of the modern United States) broadened its commercial ties with other Caribbean islands.

Enslaved Africans in the Caribbean were more numerous than those in places such as New York, which was the main slave enclave in the northeastern of the modern-day United States. The number of enslaved Africans imported from the Caribbean decreased after the New York Slave Revolt of 1712, as many white colonists blamed the incident on slaves recently arrived from the Caribbean. Between 1715 and 1741 most of the slaves of the colony remained from the West Antilles (hailing from Jamaica, Barbados and Antigua). After the New York slave revolt of 1741, slaves imported from the Caribbean were severely curtailed, and most enslaved Africans were brought directly from Africa.

Although migration from the West Indies to the United States was not very important in the first years of 19th century, it grew considerably after the end of the American Civil War in 1865, which brought about the abolition of slavery. Most of them were fleeing from poverty and certain natural phenomena (hurricanes, droughts and floods). So, the West Indians that lived in the United States increased from only 4,000 people in 1850 to more than 20,000 in 1900, while in 1930 there were already almost 100,000 people from the region living in the United States.