Arab Americans

Many of the new immigrants did not fit the acculturation patterns that worked for other

immigrant groups. • In 1923 the U.S. Supreme Court reversed previous lower-court decisions and ruled that Asian Indians were nonwhites and thus ineligible

for citizenship under the terms of the 1790

Naturalization Act.

  • In 1946 the Luce-Celler Bill removed Asian
    Indians from the "barred zone"

  • The 2000 census count identified over 400,000 foreign-born Arab Americans, a number that exceeds the combined foreign-born population from Greece and Spain.

  • The Immigration Act of 1965 and the conditions in India contributed to the increase in Asian Indian migration.

  • Arab is a broad term covering people of diverse nationalities, religions and socioeconomic backgrounds.

  • More than 250,000 Arab Americans live in southeastern Michigan, giving that area one of the largest concentrations of Arabs outside the Middle East.

  • A combination of harsh living conditions and Turkish oppression led many Syrians to leave.

  • Newly arrived Syrians often replaced departing
    Irish Americans residents in old city neighborhoods in a pattern of invasion-succession.

  • Syrian males usually came alone and then sent for wives and children

  • More than 72,000 Arabs claimed Palestinian ancestry in the 2000 Census, with most of them living in Palestinian communities clustered in California, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, and Texas.

  • Many recent Palestinian arrivals find employment in various working class trades.

  • Endogamy remains the norm among Palestinian
    Americans

  • Iran, formerly called Persia, is not an Arab country and the majority of its people speak their own language of Farsi.

  • Anti-Iranian feelings ran high in the U.S. in 1980, including verbal abuse and boycotts.

  • Today's second generation Iranian Americans grow up in a child-centered family with egalitarian norms

  • Iraqi immigrants who arrived before and World War Il faced very different political, social and economic changes in the Middle East.

  • About 30,000 Iraqi immigrants have arrived since

2000. In typical chain migration patterning, they settle where other Iraqis live, most particularly in Michigan (36 percent), California (13 percent), and Illinois (9 percent

  • In the 2000 Census more than 253,000
    Americans claimed Pakistani ancestry, and between 2000 and 2006 about 99,000 additional immigrants from Pakistan arrived, giving this group a significant presence in the United States

  • larger than, for example, the Nicaraguans or Turks.

  • Pakistani Americans have a widely dispersed settlement pattern, although 25% settle in the New York City metropolitan area

  • Structural assimilation among immigrant groups is rarely a first-generation occurrence.

  • For those who are not foreign born, their multigenerational life in the U.S. means only vestiges of ethnicity remain

recent arrivals of middle-class background whose education and occupational skills enabled them to settle in upscale urban neighborhoods or suburban communities are part of the economic mainstream, but they often have not yet overcome

social barriers to full acceptance.

  • The Functionalist View

  • Functionalists point to the immigration laws ensuring either sufficient earning power in occupational preference or a support system in relative preference to indicate how the social system has been able to adapt relatively smoothly to absorbing newcomers.

  • These better educated, skilled, connected individuals quickly adjust, contribute to the U.S. economy and seem to integrate into American society with a minimum of problems.

  • Less skilled non-Westerners have helped fill a population void in urban and exurban areas

  • The Conflict View

  • Economic competition between two wage-level groups generated ethnic antagonism and violence.

  • Tensions arise in the U.S. among African-Americans and Hispanics at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder who see foreign-born non-Westerners leapfrogging over them

  • The Interactionist View

  • Visual clues are a major means of categorizing strangers, different clothing or physical characteristics signal dissimilar types.

  • Because many immigrants can join the economic mainstream, their coworkers or neighbors assume that they have integrated socially as well.

  • Socially isolated except on rare occasions, the non-Westerners by necessity interact with compatriots, remaining a generalized entity in the minds of members of the dominant group.