Arab Americans

The term Arab American refers to the more than 4 million people living in the United States who trace their ancestry to any of the 22 nations in the Middle East and North Africa that are members of the Arab [Page 132]League. Communities of immigrants from Arabic-speaking countries began forming in the late 1800s, mostly in the industrial cities of New York and Boston, but immigrants from what was then known as Greater Syria (now Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, and Syria) quickly established enclaves in many major cities, such as Houston, Pittsburgh, Detroit, San Francisco, Birmingham, and Minneapolis, and smaller towns in Iowa, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and other states. Arabs continue to immigrate to the United States because of economic opportunities, chain migration, or because they ...