Middle Eastern Americans

Middle Eastern American
Regions with significant populations
Continental United States, smaller populations in Alaska and Hawaii
Languages
English • Arabic • Aramaic • Azerbaijani • Armenian • Georgian • Greek • Hebrew • Persian • Turkish • others
Religion
Christianity: (Eastern Orthodoxy · Catholicism)
Islam · Judaism · Druze · Zoroastrianism · Atheism · Yezidism · Agnosticism · Deism

Middle Eastern Americans are Americans with origins or citizenship from the Middle East.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the term "Middle Eastern American" applies to anyone of Western Asian and North African (Middle Eastern) extraction. This definition includes both indigenous Middle Eastern groups in diaspora (e.g. Jews, Kurds, Druze, etc.) and current immigrants from modern-day countries of the Arab League, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cyprus, Georgia, Iran, Israel, Turkey and the Central Asian republics.[1][2][3][4] Middle Eastern communities have been settling in America since at least the Dutch colonial period of New Amsterdam, when Sephardic Jews fleeing persecution in Brazil found refuge there in 1654.[5]

Population

The population of Middle Eastern Americans totals at least 10 million, combining the estimates for the Arab-American (3.7 million[6]) and the Jewish-American (6.5 million)[7] populations alone. This comes to more than 3.1% of the 318 million people in the US as of 2014.[8] 82% of Middle Eastern Americans are U.S. citizens, with 63% born in the U.S.

The population of Middle-Eastern Americans includes both Arabs and non-Arabs. In their definitions of Middle Eastern Americans, U.S. Census Bureau and the National Health Interview Survey include peoples (diasporic or otherwise) from present day Armenia, Cyprus, Iran, Israel, Turkey, and Central Asia.[9][10]

According to the 2010 US Census, California had the largest Middle Eastern immigrant population, counting nearly 400,000 people. Of states with the most Middle Eastern immigrants, Virginia has the fastest growing population, followed by Texas, Michigan, and New York.[11]

By ethnicity

Although the US Census has recorded race and ethnicity since the first census in 1790, this information has been voluntary since the end of the Civil War (non-whites were counted differently from 1787 to 1868 for the purpose of determining congressional representation).[12] As such, these statistics do not include those who did not volunteer this optional information, and so the census underestimates the total populations of each ethnicity actually present.

Middle Eastern Americans in the 2000[13] - 2010 U.S. Census,[14] the Mandell L. Berman Institute, and the North American Jewish Data Bank[7]
Ancestry20002000 (% of US population) 20102010 (% of US population)
Afghanistan Afghani 53,709 0.0191% 79,775 0.0258%
Arab 1,160,729 0.4125% 1,697,570 0.5498%
Armenia Armenian 385,488 0.1370% 474,559 0.1537%
Assyrian/Chaldo-Assyrian 81,749 0.0290% 106,821 0.0346%
Azerbaijan Azerbaijani 14,205 0.0050% %
Cyprus Cypriot 7,643 0.0027% %
Georgia (country) Georgian 6,298 0.0022% %
Iran Iranian 338,266 0.1202% 463,552 0.1501%
Israel Israeli 106,839 0.0380% 129,359 0.0419%
Jewish 6,155,000 2.1810% 6,543,820 2.1157%
Iraqi Kurdistan Kurdish 9,423 0.0033% %
Syriac 606 0.0002% %
Tajikistan Tajik 905 0.0003% %
Turkey Turkish 117,575 0.0418% 195,283 0.0633%
"Middle Eastern" 28,400 0.0101% %
"North Caucasian" 596 0.0002% %
"North Caucasian Turkic" 1,347 0.0005% 290,893 0.0942%
TOTAL 8,568,772 3.036418% 9,981,332 3.227071%

Although tabulated, "religious responses" were reported as a single total and not differentiated, despite totaling 1,089,597 in 2000.[13]

Independent organizations provide improved estimates of the total populations of races and ethnicities in the US using the raw data from the US Census and other surveys.

For example, although any respondents who self-identified as Jewish were previously included under the religious responses in the census, as Jews are an ethnoreligious group with culture and ethnicity intertwined, estimates from the Mandell L. Berman Institute and the North American Jewish Data Bank put the total population of Jews between 5.34 and 6.16 million in 2000 and around 6.54 million in 2010.[7] Similarly, the Arab-American Institute estimated the population of Arab Americans at 3.7 million in 2012.[6]

The majority of Arab Americans are Christian.[15][16] Most Maronites tend to be of Lebanese, Syrian, or Cypriot extraction; the majority of Christians of Cypriot and Palestinian background are often Eastern Orthodox.

Immigration

Over the period from 2010 through 2014, Middle Easterners ranked third among the fastest-growing immigrant groups in America with an increase of 17 percent, a few points behind Sub-Saharan Africa (21 percent) and South Asia (25 percent).[17] This continues a trend of very rapid growth over the past half-century. In 1970, fewer than 200,000 non-Jewish Middle Easterners lived in the United States; by 2000, the number had grown by 650 percent to nearly 1.5 million.[11] This represents more than twice the percentage growth rate of the entire population of immigrants to the US over the same period. Over the 1990s alone, immigration from the Middle East increased 80 percent.[11] In the early 2000s, citizenship rates among Middle Eastern immigrants was at 55 percent, which was 17 points higher than the average for immigrants overall.[11] Assuming a similar growth rate in this population as for the Middle East immigrant population overall, the number of young children in Middle Eastern families were estimated likely to grow to roughly 950,000 over the 2000s.[11]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Thomas Gryn; Christine Gambino (October 2012). "The Foreign Born From Asia: 2011" (PDF). American Community Survey Briefs, ACSBR/11-06. U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved November 16, 2015.
  2. ↑ Campbell Gibson; Emily Lennon (March 9, 1999). "Historical census statistics on the foreign-born population of the United - Region and Country or Area of Birth of the Foreign-Born Population: 1960 to 1990". Bureau of the Census. Population Division. U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved November 16, 2015.
  3. ↑ Jeanne Batalova (May 24, 2011). "Asian Immigrants in the United States". Migration Information Source. Migration Policy Institute. Retrieved November 16, 2015.
  4. ↑ Gregory Auclair; Jeanne Batalova (September 26, 2013). "Middle Eastern and North African Immigrants in the United States". Migration Information Source. Migration Policy Institute. Retrieved December 16, 2013.
  5. ↑ "Jews in America: New Amsterdam's Jewish Crusader (1655)". Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieved November 5, 2015.
  6. 1 2 Heather Brown; Emily Guskin; Amy Mitchell (November 28, 2012). "Arab-American Population Growth". Arab-American Media. Pew Research Center. Retrieved November 6, 2015.
  7. 1 2 3 Ira Sheskin; Arnold Dashefsky (2010). "Jewish Population in the United States, 2010" (PDF). Mandell L. Berman Institute North American Jewish Data Bank, Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life University of Connecticut. Brandeis University. Retrieved November 16, 2015. line feed character in |work= at position 116 (help)
  8. ↑ "U.S. and World Population Clock". U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved November 16, 2015.
  9. ↑ "2010 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) Public Use Data Release" (PDF). U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. June 2011. Retrieved November 16, 2015.
  10. ↑ Patricia Fernández-Kelly; Alejandro Portes (31 October 2013). Health Care and Immigration: Understanding the Connections. Taylor & Francis. p. 157. ISBN 978-1-317-96724-8. Retrieved 16 November 2015.
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 Steven A. Camarota (August 2002). "Immigrants from the Middle East: A Profile of the Foreign-born Population from Pakistan to Morocco". Center for Immigration Studies. Retrieved November 16, 2015.
  12. ↑ Beverly M. Pratt; Lindsay Hixson; Nicholas A. Jones (November 2, 2015). "Measuring Race And Ethnicity Across The Decades: 1790-2010". U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved November 6, 2015.
  13. 1 2 "Table 1. First, Second, and Total Responses to the Ancestry Question by Detailed Ancestry Code: 2000" (XLS). U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved December 2, 2010.
  14. ↑ "Total ancestry categories tallied for people with one or more ancestry categories reported: 2010 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates". United States Census Bureau. Retrieved November 30, 2012.
  15. ↑ "Arab Americans: Demographics". Arab American Institute. 2006. Archived from the original on June 1, 2006. Retrieved November 16, 2015.
  16. ↑ Gabriel Habib (March 17, 2004). "…And What About Arab Christians?". Al-Hewar Center, Virginia. Retrieved November 16, 2015.
  17. ↑ Karen Zeigler; Steven A. Camarota (September 2015). "U.S. Immigrant Pop. Hit Record 42.4 Million in 2014 - Table 1". Center for Immigration Studies. Retrieved November 6, 2015.
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