Washington DC [US], November 8 (ANI): ‘Arab America’…the phrase has gained traction after Michigan’s Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed won in the recently concluded United States Midterm elections. Sayed himself alluded to his Arab-American identity in a speech on November 7, when he stated that ‘Michigan was the capital of Arab America’.
“I’m honoured to be the next United States senator from the great state of Michigan,” El-Sayed said, according to Fox News. “Which, of course, I know we’re here in D.C., which, of course, is the capital of the United States of America, but Michigan is the capital of Arab America.”
Arab migration to North America (the United States and Canada) has been going on for a couple of centuries, though it gained traction in the last century and the current one as conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa drove wave upon wave of refugees around the world, including to North America.
The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) describes the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region as including: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco (and Western Sahara), the Palestinian Territories, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Most Arabs in North America come from these countries.
Meanwhile, Statistics Canada, a Government of Canada website, notes, “The term “Arab” was not used in census data during much of the time period discussed in this history section, so it relies on other terms used for ethnic or cultural backgrounds, as well as on places of birth in Southwest Asia and Northern Africa. These regions are used because, in the 2021 Census, they were the place of birth of nearly 95% of Arabs born outside Canada. Not all immigrants from these regions in past censuses would necessarily have identified as Arab, even if they came from predominantly Arab countries.”
In the US, migration from MENA began, according to The Migration Policy Institute, in the late 1800s, a time when the Ottoman Empire, the dominant Muslim power in the globe and the suzerain of the world, was already in decline.
According to The Institute, “From the late 1800s to the mid-1920s, MENA immigrants arriving in the United States consisted primarily of Arab Christians from the Ottoman province of Syria (comprising modern-day Lebanon, Israel, and Syria), fleeing war and worsening economic prospects. By 1920, the United States was home to at least 50,000 immigrants from the province, largely poorly educated and employed in low-skilled occupations. The 1924 Johnson-Reed Immigration Act put in place general immigration quotas and restricted all arrivals from Asia, effectively ending this wave.”
A second wave of migration began after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and revolutions in Egypt and Iraq in the 1950. “In part a result of the restrictive U.S. quota system, immigrants arriving during this period were highly educated elites from countries including Egypt, Iraq, and Syria,” according to the MPI.
After the US relaxed immigration rules with the landmark 1965 Immigration Act, a third wave of migrants from MENA arrived. “MENA immigrants arriving during this time had similarly high education levels as those in the second wave, but were far more numerous. Further, a much higher share was Muslim.”
Migration from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region to the United States began in the late 1800s and picked up in recent decades, driven largely by political turmoil in the region and economic opportunities abroad. In 2016, nearly 1.2 million immigrants from the MENA region lived in the United States, accounting for roughly 3 per cent of the country’s approximately 44 million immigrants.
According to the MPI, between 1980 and 2010, the size of the MENA immigrant population increased fourfold, from 223,000 to 861,000. From 2010 to 2016, the population increased another 36 per cent, to 1,167,000.
Consequently, the MENA population in the United States is very diverse. Approximately 70 per cent of MENA immigrants are from the Middle East, and around 30 per cent are from North Africa. Overall, Iraq is the top country of origin, followed by Egypt and Lebanon.
There is no greater symbol of ‘Arab America’ than the state of Michigan, as El-Sayed himself stated. The Midwestern state is known for its cities like Dearborn and Hamtramck, both majority Muslim cities and home to large Arab and Muslim populations.
The stories of these cities is a testament to the waves of immigration that have shaped America. Hamtramck, named after a French Canadian US Army officer (Colonel Jean François Hamtramck), was initially a haven for Polish immigrants. As late as the 1970s, Poles were still almost 90% of the population. By 1990, though, the Polish population fell as it moved to the suburbs. Today, it is just 10 per cent of the city’spopulation.
The Poles were replaced by Bangladeshi and Yemeni immigrants. Today, the city has the largest concentration of Bangladeshi immigrants in the state and the second-highest percentage of Arab residents after Dearborn.
As for Dearborn, its story begins with automotive pioneer Henry Ford’s Ford Company, which established the River Rouge Complex in 1917. This attracted Arab Muslims mostly from southern Lebanon to work in the company’s plants.
In the years since, civil war in Yemen, the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the Lebanese Civil War in 1975, all led to a burgeoning Arab and Muslim population in Dearborn. In 2023, Dearborn became the first Arab-majority city in the US. According to the 2023 census, over 50 per cent of the city’s residents claim ancestry from the MENA region.
Meanwhile, in Canada, immigration from the Middle East began in the 1880s. “The Canadian government classified these immigrants as “Syrians,” but most were from the area that is now Lebanon, which, at the time, was part of the Ottoman Empire. The first recorded immigrant from this region to Canada was Abraham Bounadere, who came to Montréal in 1882. Immigration from this region grew throughout the 1880s, the 1890s and the first decade of the 1900s, concurrent with Canada’s rising immigration from other regions such as Eastern Europe. These immigrants were predominantly Christian. Many were young, unmarried men seeking economic opportunity,” notes Statistics Canada.
According to the portal, there was a lull in migration from the Middle East until after World War II. Arab Muslim immigration to Canada picked up during the Lebanese Civil War. “From the 1990s onwards, Arab immigrants to Canada came from a wider range of countries and were more likely to be Muslim. A major trend, particularly in the first decade of the 2000s, was rising Arab Muslim immigration from the Northern African countries of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia—all of which were once colonized by France (Rothermund, 2006)—to Quebec. The most recent major event in Arab immigration to Canada has been the admission of Syrian refugees fleeing the conflict in Syria, particularly from 2016 to 2019, with the highest peak of admissions in 2016,” notes Statistics Canada. (ANI)