A second wave of Kurdish immigrants arrived in the 1990s fleeing Saddam Hussein's genocidal Anfal Campaign in northern Iraq.

[6] Kurdish immigration to the US began in the 20th century, after the World War I, with several waves of migration to the United States from the area considered Kurdistan.

There were also large groups of Kurds that left because of the socio-political turmoil, a byproduct of the revolution and general political instability.

The opposition to the Shah, many immigrants from Iran were granted asylum with little trouble and received assisted travel to the US.

[9] Other byproducts of the revolution were border disputes between Iran and Iraq, which culminated in the Iran–Iraq War, from 1980 to 1988 and the Anfal Campaign.

[10] Although there was widespread support for Iran from Iraqi Kurds, the war caused severe internal divisions within the Kurdish population.

The Iraqi army began targeting hundreds of individuals accused of working against Saddam's regime.

[13] The collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime in April 2003 led to a massive influx of Kurds returning to lands they were displaced from during the Ba'athist policies.

However, the U.S. Census data shows there are approximately 4,000 Kurds in Davidson County, and 5,000 in Tennessee, much lower than what Kurdish community officials estimate.

[9] Iraqi Kurdish populations in America have open channels of communication with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) mediated through various groups such as cultural centers, mosques, and other humanitarian organizations.

[24] Despite oppressive policies such as the banning of the language, Iranian Kurds achieved semi-autonomy for a brief moment in time when the Mahabad Republic rose to power in 1946, with the tacit support of the Soviet Union.

[26] The "Kurdish Question" has been present in Turkish politics since the country's inception l, and the issue has remained contentious.

The Turkish government has tried multiple assimilation strategies, including language policies that suppressed the Kurdish language, discriminative economic and employment practices towards Kurdish people and attempting to wholly ignore the ethnic identity of Kurds by referring to them instead as "Mountain Turks".

One reason for the scarce amount of Turkish Kurds emigrating to the US is that many emigrating Turkish Kurds will travel to one of the closer Kurdish diaspora communities within the European Union like Germany, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Finland, all of which are all home to varying sized Kurdish communities.