Christian Emigration - Christian Emigration From The Middle East

Christian Emigration From The Middle East

Many Christians have emigrated from the Middle East, a phenomenon that has been attributed to various causes included economic factors, political and military conflict, and feelings of insecurity or isolation among minority Christian populations. The higher rate of emigration among Christians, compared to other religious groups, has also been attributed to their having stronger support networks available abroad, in the form of existing emigrant communities. Lebanon has experienced a large migration of Lebanese Christians. These Lebanese Christians have migrated to North and South America, Europe and Australia before, during and since the 1975-1992 Lebanese Civil War. Higher Muslim birthrates, the arrival of Palestinian refugees, and the expansion of the original Lebanese mutasarrifa to include areas populated largely by Muslim have contributed to reducing the Christian proportion of the Lebanese population. Lebanese Christians still remain culturally and politically prominent, forming something under 40% of the population. Since the end of the Lebanese Civil War, Muslim emigrants have outnumbered Christians, but the latter remain somewhat overrepresented compared to their proportion of the population .

In the Palestinian Territories, there has been considerable Arab emigration and Christians are disproportionately involved. Of the total Palestinian Christian population of Israel and the Palestinian territories, it is estimated that 35% has emigrated since 1967 .

However, recent years have also seen an influx of Christian immigrants to Israel from Ethiopia and Eastern Europe, with 290,000 or up to 41% of immigrants arriving from the former Soviet Union being non-Jewish (ibid). These non-Jewish immigrants have been found to have falsified their documents to indicate that they are Jewish in order to leave their countries of origin and their religious activities as Christians has largely been clandestine. Recently, Israel passed a law requiring all citizens to declare a loyalty oath to the state as the home of Jews.

Migrant workers from Christians countries such as the Philippines immigrated to Israel during the last decade and replaced the Palestinian workers. The Israeli government regularly has open debates on what to do with these workers and their children, as they present a demographic threat to the state. Deportation orders are thus common for these workers.

Since the United States-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the resulting breakdown of law and order in that country, many Syriac speaking Assyrians and other Christians have fled the country, taking refuge in Syria, Jordan and further afield. Despite Assyrians making up only 3% of Iraq's population, on October 2005, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reported of the 700,000 Iraqis who took refuge in Syria between October 2003 and March 2005, 36% were "Iraqi Christians."