Lebanese Americans

Demographics

Lebanese Americans are diverse and can be Maronite or Melkite Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Shi'a or Sunni Muslim, Druze, or from smaller religious sects. Lebanese Americans can be recent immigrants or can have great-grandparents who immigrated more than a century ago. Some left Lebanon for economic reasons, to join family already living in the United States, or were fleeing war and civil strife.

Between 1899 and 1914, immigrants from Greater Syria (the majority of whom came from present-day Lebanon) were arriving at an average of 5,300 per year, according to the 1925 Report of the Commissioner General of Immigration. Combined with those who had been living in the United States since the 1870s, the Lebanese American population was estimated at 200,000 in 1924. The majority of these immigrants were Christians. Druze began immigrating in large numbers after 1900, and other Muslim groups (Shi'a and Sunni) followed. Early population numbers for Lebanese Americans, like other Arab American communities, are difficult to determine because of the classification systems used by immigration officials and census enumerators, who often labeled people from Lebanon as Syrian, Asian, or Turkish.

Even today, it is difficult to determine the population of Lebanese Americans. Because the 1977 Race and Ethnic Standards for Federal Statistics directive classified all people of Middle Eastern and Arab ancestry as “white,” anyone who traces their ancestry to Lebanon is counted as white. Since Lebanese and other Arabs are not counted as a distinct racial group on the decennial census, more accurate population numbers can come from the American Community Survey (ACS), as it records “Lebanese” as an ancestry.

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