Arab Americans

History

The first influx of Arab immigrants to the United States took place between the late 1880s and the [Page 28]1920s. A second wave began in the late 1940s, particularly after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Between 1925 and 1948, political restrictions were placed on Arab immigration to the United States, and it was further limited by the Depression and by World War II. Most of the recent immigration took place following the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, the civil war in Lebanon, the Kurdi-Iraqi conflict of the 1960s, the Iraq-Iran war from 1980 to 1988, and the Gulf War of 1990. These conflicts have contributed to a large influx of Arab Americans who have come to the United States in search of refuge from war, education, better health care, and an opportunity to establish their own businesses. Many of the Arab Americans in this immigration flow were Muslim, with higher educational backgrounds and incomes than their predecessors.

Demographics

Counting the number of Arab Americans in the United States is challenging in many respects, mainly because of misrepresentation or misidentification of their ancestry. Prior to the 1920s, census data counted Arabs along with Turks, Armenians, and other ethnic groups who were not of Arab origin; non-Syrian Asian Arabs were counted as “other Asians”; and Palestinians were counted as refugees, as Israelis, or according to their last country of residence. While the 1990 census data reported 870,000 Americans identifying themselves as having Arab ancestry, by 2000 this number had grown to 1.2 million. Assuming that census data are adjusted for its race/ethnicity category and that Arab Americans fill out census forms, it is estimated that by 2010 their number will increase to approximately 3 million.

One of the limitations of the census is that, to some extent, it does not overcome the problem of geographic location when taking “Arab” ancestry into consideration. For example, Egypt may be considered by many as an Arab country (particularly because its nationals speak Arabic as their official language); however, some Egyptians consider themselves Africans rather than Arabs. Another limitation is that people may identify themselves by the color of their skin rather than their ethnic origin. The U.S. Bureau of the Census categorizes Arab Americans as Whites, although some of them are Black.

Arab Americans live throughout the 50 United States, but the greatest percentage are in California, New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Ohio, Texas, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Virginia. Dearborn, Michigan, has been identified by the U.S. Census Bureau as the city with the highest percentage of Arab Americans. A number of Arab Americans were exposed to multilingual education in their home country before immigrating to the United States and are bilingual, primarily in English and Arabic (the official language of Arab countries). However, they have different dialects, depending on their country of origin.

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