Essay On Arab Immigration

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People of Arabic descent have been migrating in the United States for over the past hundred years; however significant numbers of Arab immigrants into the US began in the 20th century (Auclair, 1). Between 1880 and 1924, over 95,000 Arabs came into America and around 200,000 lived in the US by 1924 (Asi, 1). With the National-Origins Act of 1924 the number of Arab immigrants into the US decreased and continued until 1965 when the Hart-Cellar Act was passed. The number of Arab immigrants coming into America continues to increase as time passes (De La Cruz, 2). However defining a person as Arabic has become a problem; the U.S. Census Bureau categorizes a person as Arab when they come from an Arabic-speaking country. Though, there are some people from Arabic-speaking countries who do not consider themselves as Arab and vice versa (De La Cruz, 1). Since it is hard to define a person as Arabic, the number of Arab immigrants in the US and Arab-Americans has a large margin of error and statistics on them are estimated. However, even with a large margin of error it is clear that the Arab population is increasing and shows no signs of stopping (De La Cruz, 1).
The American Population has reached over 300 million people from the years of 2006 to 2010, in which 1.5 million of them are from Arab descent (Asi, 2). These 1.5 million people in 2010 with Arab ancestry showed a 76 percent increase since 1990 (Asi, 1). They are all distributed throughout the fifty states of the country but are most concentrated in metropolitan cities (Brown, 2). The most Arab populated cities in the US include New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C. (Brown, 2). With the numbers of Arab immigrants increasing in America, the jobs tha...

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... They believed assimilation occurred into different sections of American life, and could happen in one generation or through several generations. The first section of assimilation was the straight line method that occurred step by step. An immigrant enters America and overtime they become part of mainstream society by learning the language, learning the culture, and improving occupation. If they don’t, it is believed that their children will. Another section is through using your ethnic community for upward mobility. It allows for the maintenance of their culture while drawing on their resources to move them up into American society. The last section the authors believe an immigrant can assimilate is downward into inner city culture or underclass. This would be a class with high drop-out and crime rates, low employment, and poor schooling.

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