By James J. Zogby|17:45 May 4, 2026|

During the 250th anniversary of the United States of America, this Arab American Heritage month is a good time to reflect on the history of Arab immigration to America and the community’s centuries-long continuous presence here.

During America’s first century, just a trickle of immigrants came from the Arab world, leaving a handful of colorful anecdotes: an Arab immigrant who fought in the Revolutionary War and a North African Arab who settled in North Carolina in the early 18th century.

But in the 1880s, larger groups of Arab immigrants began arriving. Like their southern European counterparts, they sought employment opportunities in mill towns of New England, Mid-Atlantic, and Midwestern states. Most emigrated from areas of the Ottoman Empire known today as Syria and Lebanon.

Like other ethnic immigrant communities, they settled near extended family and friends from the villages or cities from whence they came and built places of worship to establish themselves in their new communities. Maronite Catholic and Syrian or Greek Orthodox Christian communities dot Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New York, all dating back to the 19th century. And America’s first mosques were founded around this time in North Dakota and Iowa by Lebanese Muslim immigrants.

Emigration from the Mount of Lebanon region spiked during the second decade of the 20th century, due to famine imposed there by the First World War and actions of the Allies and Turks. The Mount of Lebanon lost approximately half its population to starvation, disease, or migration.

Like other Mediterranean immigrants of the time, many became peddlers, selling their goods and services door to door. Considered “foreign” because of their darker skin, a backlash developed against Italians, Greeks, and “Syrians,” with many becoming victims of violence and even lynchings. By the mid-1920s, legislation was prepared to eliminate their visa allotments, steeply reducing legal immigration from the Arab world.

The first wave of Arab immigration, from 1880 to 1920, saw about 65,000 immigrants from “Greater Syria.” During the next four decades new immigrants from Arab countries declined to fewer than 20,000. The absence of new immigrants, the Great Depression, and hyper-patriotism generated by two world wars and McCarthyism accelerated assimilation of “Syrians” into American life.

By the 1960s, as a result of natural growth, Arab Americans numbered almost three-quarters of a million people, mostly Syrian and Lebanese. With Arab immigration restrictions lifted, the community’s numbers and composition began to change.

US immigration from the region increased to over 100,000 per decade. This spike resulted from: tumultuous conditions that shook the Arab region, including the creation of Israel and expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes; civil strife from throwing off colonial rule; and the backlog of Syrians and Lebanese seeking family reunification after decades of separation.

While previous immigrants were mostly Christians from the Arab East, this third wave was more diverse: almost one-quarter from Syria and Lebanon, one-quarter from Egypt, a slightly larger group from Jordan (many Palestinians), and the remainder from 14 other Arab countries.

The most dramatic increases in Arab immigration occurred in the first two decades of this century. Wars and political upheaval again were major factors, driving 1.1 million to immigrate—with more than half coming from Iraq, Egypt, and Jordan, and another third from Somalia, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. These recent immigrants have followed the same settlement patterns and a similar trajectory to success as earlier waves. Yemenis, for example, who came in the 1970s as farm or dock workers, are now organized as a powerful bloc of small business owners in New York and across California, with their children forming an association of young Yemeni professionals. The same is true for Palestinians, Egyptians, Jordanians, Iraqis, and more recent Somali and Sudanese communities.

While last century’s Arab American elected officials were mainly Lebanese, now Palestinian, Egyptian, Yemeni, Somali, and Sudanese hold public office.

These success stories we tell and celebrate, but to complete the picture, a few additional factors must be noted.

Upheavals across the Middle East and disastrous US policies prompted many Arab Americans to become active politically. As our numbers and organizational capacity grew, some pro-Israel groups took a zero-sum approach to political empowerment. Efforts were made to silence our voices, tarnish our reputations, and exclude us from politics and media, resulting in dangerous Arab-baiting, smearing of Arab American leaders and activists, and even death threats and political violence targeting our community’s leaders and organisations.

But the story does not end there. Despite the bigotry, hate crimes, and campaigns to slander and silence us, my community has continued to grow in capacity, representation, and voice. Most remarkable is not the hostility that the community has endured, but its persistence in demanding full participation in American civic life, never losing faith in America’s promise as a nation of immigrants and the knowledge that our work strengthens American democracy every day.

The writer is president of the Washington-based Arab American Institute

source https://jordantimes.com/opinion/james-j-zogby/arab-americans-a-larger-and-more-diverse-community