Syrian Americans

Syrian Americans are citizens of the United States of Syrian ancestry or nationality. This ethnic group includes first generation immigrants, and descendants of Syrians who immigrated to the United States. It is believed that Syrians first arrived in the United States in large number in 1880.^[2] Many of the earliest Syrian Americans settled in New York, Boston, and Detroit. Immigration from Syria to the United States was stopped for a long time after the United States Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1924, which made it difficult.

More than forty years later, the Immigration Act of 1965, removed the quotas and immigration from Syria to the United States increased very much. It is estimated that 64,600 Syrians immigrated to the United States between 1961 and 2000.^[3]

Most of the Syrian immigrants to the US from 1880 to 1960 were Christian; a small minority were Jewish,^[4] Muslim Syrians arrived in the United States mostly after 1965. According to the United States 2000 Census, there were 142,897 Americans of Syrian ancestry, about 12% of the Arab population in the United States.^[5]

1. ↑ U.S. Census Bureau: Population by Selected Ancestry Group and Region: 2005
2. ↑ "Lebanese and Syrian Americans". Utica College. Retrieved 2007-05-06.
3. ↑ "Immigrants, by Country of Birth: 1961 to 2005". United States Census. Retrieved 2007-04-29.
4. ↑ A Community of Many Worlds: Arab Americans in New York City, Museum of the City of New York/Syracuse University Press, 2002
5. ↑ "The Arab Population: 2000" (PDF). United States Census. Retrieved 2007-04-29.