Assyrian Americans
Assyrians are an indigenous Middle Eastern ethnic group native to Mesopotamia in West Asia who descend from their ancient counterparts, directly originating from the ancient indigenous Mesopotamians of Akkad and Sumer who first developed the independent civilization in northern Mesopotamia that would become Assyria in 2600 BC.
Modern Assyrians often culturally self-identify as Syriacs, Chaldeans, or Arameans for religious and tribal identification.
[3][4][5] As of 2022[update] U.S. Census Bureau estimates, there are 94,532 people in the United States declaring Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriacs ancestry (with a margin of error ±7,255).
More Assyrians arrived throughout the 80s and 90s for similar reasons, with newer residents moving out of Detroit into suburbs such as Royal Oak and Sterling Heights due to the crack epidemic in Detroit, while others began to move to San Diego, establishing a new Assyrian community there.
More and more Assyrians, as they establish themselves financially, quickly move out of Detroit and into the other locations, including San Diego and cities in Arizona.
[11] Iraqi president Saddam Hussein donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Chaldean Catholic Churches in Detroit and received a key to the city in the 1980s on behalf of mayor Coleman Young, when the Ba’ath regime was an ally of the United States government.
[12] Mostly all new Chaldean Catholic Assyrian immigrants and low-income senior citizens tend to reside in Detroit, in the 7 Mile Road between Woodward Avenue and John R Street.
After World War II, several Assyrian men who had been educated in Iraq by American Jesuits traveled to the United States.
"[14] According to the 2022 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates, 94,532 people in the United States are of Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac ancestry (with a margin of error ±7,255).
A little over 16% of the state's population (4,097) resides in the Central Valley and San Francisco Bay Area, places known for several Eastern Assyrian, Chaldean Catholic, and Syriac Orthodox churches.
As of the 2023 American Community Survey five-year estimates, the largest populations reside in Chicago (3,099)[20] and the adjacent northern suburbs of Niles (1,113)[21] and Skokie (2,768).
The federal government of the United States took the word Syrian to mean Arabs from the Syrian Arab Republic and not as one of the terms to identify the ethnically distinct Assyrians, although the terms Syrian and Syriac are strongly accepted by mainstream majority academic opinion to be etymologically, historically, geographically, and ethnically derivative of the earlier term Assyrian,[23][24] and historically meant Assyrian (see name of Syria) and not Arab or Aramean.
