Migration
Many millions of Middle Eastern Christians currently live in the diaspora, elsewhere in the world. These include such countries as Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, the United States and Venezuela among them. There are also many Middle Eastern Christians in Europe, especially in the United Kingdom, France (due to its historical connections with Lebanon and North Africa) and Spain (due to its historical connections with northern Morocco), and to a lesser extent, Ireland, Germany, Italy, Greece and the Netherlands.
The largest number of Middle Eastern Christians residing in the diaspora is that of Lebanese Maronites, who have migrated out of Lebanon for security and economic reasons since WWI. Much fled Lebanon during the Lebanese Civil War.
Syriac Christians currently reside in diaspora with large communities in Europe, America and Australia, reaching more than a million outside of the Middle East. Much of these is attributed to the massive Christian exodus from Iraq, following the 2003 invasion and the consequent Iraq War.
Among the Arab Christians, about 400,000 Palestinian Christians reside in the diaspora, largely in the Americas, where their communities have been established since the late 19th century and peaked following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. More emigrated from Lebanon during the Lebanese Civil War.
The majority of self-identifying Arab Americans are Eastern Rite Catholic or Orthodox, according to the Arab American Institute, although most Middle Eastern Christians in the USA do not identify as Arabs. On the other hand, most American Muslims are black or of South Asian (Indian or Pakistani) origin.
Read more about this topic: Christianity In The Middle East