Arab immigration to the United States

Arab immigration to the United States began when Arabs accompanied Spanish explorers to the US in the 15th century. During the Revolutionary War, horses exported from Algeria replenished the American cavalry and Morocco was the first country to officially recognize the independence of the United States in 1787 in what is known as the "treaty of Friendship". However, Arabs did not start immigrating to the United States in significant numbers until the 19th century. Since the first major wave of Arab immigration in the late 19th century, the majority of Arab immigrants have settled in or near large cities. Roughly 94 percent of all Arab immigrants live in metropolitan areas, and nearly one third of all Arab Americans live in or around just three cities: New York, Los Angeles and Detroit. While most Arab-Americans have similarly settled in just a handful of major American cities, they form a fairly diverse population representing nearly every country and religion from the Arab world.

These figures aside, recent demographics suggest a shift in immigration trends. More Arab Muslims are coming to the United States than ever before in the most current wave of Arab immigration. Arab immigration has, historically, come in waves, most often as a result of struggles and hardships stemming from specific periods of war or discrimination in their respective mother countries.

While individually Arabs have been immigrating to North America since before the United States became a nation, the first significant period of Arab immigration began in the 1870s and lasted until 1924 when the Johnson-Reed Quota Act was passed nearly ending immigration from this region for the time being. The overwhelming majority of Arab immigrants during this period came from the Ottoman province of Syria, which currently encompasses the countries of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan , and Palestine. In the 1920s, with the Lebanese nationalist movement, immigrants from what is now modern Lebanon started adopting a Lebanese national identity. Arabs immigrating prior to that decade from modern-day Lebanon were regarded as Syrians and were a predominantly Christian population. During this period, only five to ten percent of all Arab immigrants were Muslim, and an even smaller fraction were Druze. Arab Christians historically had a much easier time immigrating to the United States than did Muslims. During this first wave of immigration, greater Syria was still under Ottoman control, but tensions existed between the Arab Muslim and Christians. Out of this environment, many "Syrians" seized this opportunity to emigrate in hopes of a better life, and many came to the United States.

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