Arab immigration to the United States

Roughly 94 percent of all Arab immigrants live in metropolitan areas,[1][2] While most Arabic-speaking Americans have similarly settled in just a handful of major American cities, they form a fairly diverse population representing nearly every country and religion from the Arab world.

Many came for entrepreneurial reasons,[5][6] and during the latter waves some came as a result of struggles and hardships stemming from specific periods of war or discrimination in their respective mother countries.

[4][9][10] Arabs immigrating prior to that decade from modern-day Lebanon were regarded as "Syrians"[9] and were a predominantly Christian population.

[11][13] During this period, there was also a small percentage of Arab Muslim and Druze immigrants, though the size of these groups is hard to determine.

[2] During this first wave of immigration, greater Syria was still under Ottoman control, but tensions existed between the Arab Muslims and Christians.

Though the Greater Syria region was not impacted by the Asiatic Barred Zone,[8] Arab immigration slowed greatly due to these restrictive quotas and the Great Depression from the late 1920s to the end of the 1940s reducing immigration to the United States to less than 1,000 persons per year.

Many of the Arabs that immigrated between 1950 and 1965 were members of the established elite in countries like Egypt, Syria, and Iraq who fled due to popular revolutions and the new regimes that came with them.

Palestinian immigrants during this time commonly went to Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, or Egypt before making the journey to the United States.

[22] Also, the rise of Islamism in the Middle East during the past few decades helped further drain the region of its native Christian populations.

Again, in keeping with the "brain-drain" trend of the region, a large portion of these immigrants were educated professionals not willing to serve in the army.

Harsh United Nations sanctions following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait further deteriorated Iraq's economy, increasing emigration.

**Includes those from Algeria, Bahrain, Comoro Islands, Djibouti, Kuwait, Libya, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.