Syrian American

Syrian American

Syrian Americans are residents of the United States of Syrian ancestry or nationality. This group includes Americans of Syrian ancestry, Syrian first generation immigrants, or descendants of Syrians who emigrated to the United States. Syrian Americans may be members of a number of differing ethnicities, including Arabs, Assyrians/Syriacs, Antiochian Greeks, Kurds, Armenians and Circassians. It is believed that the first significant wave of Syrian immigrants to arrive in the United States was in 1880. Many of the earliest Syrian Americans settled in New York, Boston, and Detroit. Immigration from Syria to the United States suffered a long hiatus after the United States Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1924, which restricted immigration. More than 40 years later, the Immigration Act of 1965, abolished the quotas and immigration from Syria to the United States saw a surge. An estimated 64,600 Syrians emigrated to the United States between 1961 and 2000.

The overwhelming majority of Syrian immigrants to the US from 1880 to 1960 were Christian, a minority were Jewish, whereas Muslim Syrians arrived in the United States chiefly 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.