Saudi Americans

Saudi Arabia is a Middle East kingdom bordered by Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates and occupying most of the Arabian Peninsula, which juts out from western Asia into the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. The country's name comes from the House of Saud, which has ruled the kingdom since its 1932 founding. An absolute monarchy, it is not a theocracy but does ground its political and legal system in the Wahhabi school of Islamic thought, which is fiercely monotheistic. Saudi Arabia's modern importance results from its possession of the world's second-largest oil reserves, which accounts for most of the government's revenue and nearly all of the country's exports.

There are 7,419 Saudi Americans, according to the 2010 Census, making them one of the smallest ethnic groups in the United States; most of those Saudis are residents who will not seek citizenship.

There is no evidence of Saudi immigration to the United States prior to World War II, and immigration to the United States by Arabs inhabiting the area before it became Saudi Arabia is a distinct but unattested possibility. The first Saudis to move to the United States did so because they were diplomats and diplomatic staff working for the Saudi embassy in Washington, D.C., in the World War II era. After the war, however, Saudi families began to send their sons to the United States for college, much as they had sent them to Britain earlier; after the war, the United States was in a better position economically than war-ravaged Europe, and perhaps as relevant, had demonstrated its prominence in the coming new world order.

The government of Saudi Arabia is wealthy, but the people for the most part are not. The government uses its wealth to provide far more for its citizens than the West would ever consider practical. Early oil wealth, for instance, paid to bring electricity and air conditioning to the country, and later financed other infrastructure improvements in order to keep the country—except for the most rural areas, which generally lagged behind—up to date with the modern world, an expensive task given the vast amount of land (one-third the size of the United States) across which its population is distributed. Another use of that oil money is to finance Saudi students’ education.

Saudi men studying abroad—almost always men, as women traveling abroad are required to be chaperoned—are provided with all the fees charged by the school (tuition, room and board, textbooks, health insurance fees), a stipend for clothes and incidental expenses, and one round-trip ticket to Saudi Arabia each year, so that they can visit their families. This had the added benefit of encouraging Saudi families to educate their children. Additional economic incentives encourage marriage—Saudi women marrying Saudi students, for instance, can have their educations paid for as well, which provides the new family with more money.