Arab Immigration into Michigan
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The history of Arab immigration in Michigan, particularly the Dearborn and Detroit areas, illustrates similar challenges and experiences as those faced by other waves of immigrants in United States History. While the largest waves of Arab immigrants to the U.S. occurred during the 1870s, primarily from the region that is modern Lebanon, there is anecdotal evidence that some Arabs came to the United States with the Spanish explorers of the 1500s. Arab immigrants were largely concentrated in New York and migrated west because of trade. The waves of Arab immigrants in the 1870s were mainly single men who were employed as traveling tradesmen, serving primarily rural areas with ôsuitcases of notions, dry goods, and other small commoditiesö (Rignall, 2003, p. 2).The more successful of these tradesmen eventually began settling in more urban areas like Chicago, Dearborn and Detroit. As their success in trade grew, many Arab immigrants sponsored the immigration of other friends of family members. Like other ethnic immigrants, Arabs chose to concentrate in various cities as a result of their growing economic success. Arab immigrants were a significant portion of the great migration of immigrants to the U.S. from 1880-1925. By the end of this wave of immigration, more than 200,000 Arabs would reside in the United States. In 1923, the first Arab mosque in the United States was constructed in Detroit, Michigan. In the 196
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re they may pray in a familiar manner, stores where they may buy the clothes they prefer and the foods they grew up with: in sum, a cultural milieu that dulls the edges of the experience of dislocation and adjustment (p. 1).
The city of Detroit boats the oldest and most diverse Arab community in the U.S. The Arab community continues to choose Detroit as its favorite location to settle because of numerous job opportunities and large numbers of Arabs. War is one of the biggest drivers of Arab immigration into Detroit. Between 1983 and 1990 more than 30,000 immigrants settled in Detroit from Lebanon alone, with an additional 10,000 arriving from Africa, Canada and Europe (Howell, 2000). Political and economic instability in their homeland continues to drive Arab immigrants to Michigan. However, while most nationalities and ethnicities of Arabs are represented in Detroit, there is an inverse relationship that exists with respect to percentages of these nationalities in the Middle East and Detroit. As Howell (2000) maintains, this inverse relationship further illustrates the forces that fuel immigration from the Middle East to southeast Michigan:
Christians make up less than 5% of the Arab world, but in Michigan they are half the
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Approximate Word count = 2484
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)
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