Jordanian American
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| (80,120 (2014 American Community Survey) 63,334 (Jordanian-born, 2014)) |
|
| Regions with significant populations | |
|
New York City Metropolitan Area New Jersey · Washington, DC · Chicago. |
|
| Languages | |
| American English · Arabic | |
| Religion | |
|
Christianity (Eastern Orthodox) and Islam (Sunni) |
|
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Palestinian Americans · Syrian Americans · Lebanese Americans · Egyptian Americans · other Arab Americans |
Jordanian Americans are Americans who are descended from Jordanian people. According to surveys conducted in 2011 with respect to the American population, there some 72,730 people descend from Jordanians.
The history of the Jordanian immigration to the United States is relatively recent. It seems that the first Jordanians who emigrated to this country did it shortly after the Second World War (1945) in relatively small groups. Those first Jordanians settled in Chicago esp. in Near West and Southwest Sides section,"New York City, and the Southwest and West Coast states (i.e. California) at the end of 1950, when about 1,000 Jordanians lived in the country.
These early migrants were forced to work as immigrants because of poverty that Jordan suffered at the time, caused by the Arab-Israeli War, which took place in this small country. They were a group of hard workers. Some of these Jordanians opened retail stores while others managed to earn degrees in business, medicine and engineering. Many men returned with their families to Jordan after working or studying in Chicago and New York for several years.
In those early years, people in the Jordanian East Bank and West Bank Palestinians could travel to the United States with Jordanian passports, creating the undefined category "Palestinian - Jordanian." In the 1950s, 5,762 Jordanians immigrated to the United States. In the mid 1960s, due to U.S. immigration laws and the remained of the Arab-Israeli War of 1967 in Jordan, the number of Jordanians who emigrated to the United States almost doubled: 11,727 Jordanians immigrated. At this time the majority chose to settle in Western cities and in the southwest of the country, except the wealthy Jordanians who felt more comfortable in the suburbs of large cities. Then in the 1970s, 27,535 Jordanians arrived, reflecting an era of civil strife in Jordan. In the 1980s, immigration averaged was around 2,500 a year. By then, the Jordanian community in the United States had grown at a rapid pace, and it already represented a large population. This was in large part related to the Arab-Israeli war in Jordan as well as the Jordanian Civil War of 1970–71. Therefore, a substantial number of Jordanians who settled in the United States at this time were war refugees. The total number of Jordanian immigrants from 1820 to 1984 was 56,720. Jordanian emigration was due to internal strife in his country, well as also economic issues. In the U.S. they remained economic issues and the salaries were higher than in Jordan.
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