Iraqi Americans
Iraqi Americans (Arabic: أمريكيون عراقيون) are American citizens of Iraqi descent. As of 2015, the number of Iraqi Americans is around 145,279, according to the United States Census Bureau.[2]
According to the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, 49,006 Iraqi foreign born immigrated to the United States between 1989 and 2001 and 25,710 Iraqi-born immigrants naturalized between 1991 and 2001. However, the 2000 United States Census reported that there were approximately 90,000 immigrants born in Iraq residing in the United States.
Religion[edit]
Muslims[edit]
The Iraqi Muslims who migrated from Iraq are mostly of the Sunni Arabs, 75% and 10% are Sunni Kurds and Sunni Turkmen, most of them emigrated after the invasion of Iraq, and some emigrated starting from the thirties of the last century. As for the Shiites, they are not less than 10%.
Christians[edit]
The Iraqi Christians who migrated from Iraq are mainly Assyrians (Chaldo-Assyrians). They have large populations in Michigan (the majority in Detroit), Illinois, New York, New Jersey and California. Many began migrating to the United States after the Assyrian genocide during World War I. There are also some Iraqi Armenian Christians in the U.S.
Over half of the 64,000 Iraqi Americans in Michigan are Christian.[13]
Mandaeans[edit]
Several thousand Mandaean Iraqis currently live in the United States.[14] The majority live in Detroit, Michigan with communities in Chicago, Illinois (esp. in a section called Little Iraq); Worcester, Massachusetts; Paterson, New Jersey (Little Ramallah section); Long Island, New York; Houston, Texas; and perhaps in the largest Iraqi-American communities of Los Angeles, California; Orange County, California (Little Arabia in Anaheim, California) and San Diego, California.
Jews[edit]
One of the oldest Iraqi communities in the United States follow Judaism. Jewish residents from Iraq began to emigrate to the American Continent at the turn of the twentieth century. The first known Iraqi Jewish immigrants to the United States arrived between the years 1900–1905. About twenty families immigrated from Baghdad to New York City.[15] World War I (1914–1918), brought more Jewish immigrants from Iraq, in addition to the already existent Iraqi Jewish communities in the United States. Among them were at least sixty young individuals seeking education as well as business people looking for new and better opportunities.[15] The eruption of World War II in 1939, resulted in more than seventy Babylonian Jewish families immigrating to the United States from Iraq.[15] Other Jewish immigrants of Baghdadian ancestry arrived in Southern California from the Far East in the early 1920s.[15] It is estimated that the total Iraqi Jewish population in the US exceeds 15,000 people, with large concentrations in California, New York, Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts and New Jersey. Smaller known groups of Iraqi Jews, can also be found in Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas, as well as other States.[15]
The members of the community are driven by ambition to succeed in businesses and as professionals, and this urge has been taking precedence over most other aims in life apart from family cohesion and religious observance during the High Holidays. High education is greatly valued, and almost every school graduate enters College after high school where he or she tends to specialize in a profession. In the early 1990s, a magazine called The Periodical Publication of Congregation Bene Naharayim was published in New York and it reaffirmed the pride of the Iraqi Jews in their ancient heritage, by linking it directly to the glorious traditions of the Babylonian Jewry. Another newsletter for the local Babylonian Jewish community in Los Angeles called "Yosef Haim" began to be published in 1996. It reports on what is taking place in the local Iraqi Jewish community.[15]