Many people have not really thought of Middle Eastern Americans as a significant racial group in the United States until after the attacks on September 11, 2001. What people do not realize is that this group of people has been in the United States for a very long time and it is usually not until something big happens that we tend to notice them within our ranks as Americans. During this paper, I will give a very brief history of the Middle Easterners immigration to the United States. There will also be talk of what their experiences have been like in the country, as well as the political, social, and cultural issues and concerns that have proven evident throughout American history. This paper will also talk about legislation enacted to constrain and then later alleviate prejudicial boundaries. The first known rush of Middle Eastern decent individuals immigrating to the United States on their own free will was in the 1880’s, during the Great Migration. Before this, the Middle Easterners were usually of slave decent, as Spanish traders around the late 15th century brought them for trade in the Americas. During the Great Migration, this group immigrated to the United States for many of the same reasons others did. The main driving factors were religious, political, and economical factors. It has been sad that most of the immigrants, almost 70 percent, that came to the United States from the Middle East during the period of 1899-1910 were mostly illiterate and poor. As the Great Migration continued, prejudice and discrimination often occurred as natural-born Americans were getting upset with the immigrations into their country. Most of the Middle Easterners characterized as being poor, criminals that were uneducated in the American ways and that had no clue about the American laws and cultures. As the Middle Eastern Americans claimed their status in the United States, there were many concerns as to the political, social, and cultural differences for the two cultures, though this was not so common with “Americanized’ Middle Eastern Americans. As this group of people became familiar with living in the United States, many cultural and social elements were noticed to be sizably different. Most noticeable are the gender roles. These are roles are very different from the traditional American culture. The Middle Eastern American usually has strict rules about how the boys and girls interact with other children and within their own families. The boys are usually more dominant in the family, while the oldest male child usually is given authority over his siblings. Some things even as precious as marriage, in American eyes, is viewed as being very different in the Middle Eastern culture. Usually, when the women in the family are married, it is usually because of an arranged marriage and they are typically younger in age, although some adaption has been done to follow state and federal laws. Social issues often arise because of the way women are treated in traditional Middle Eastern way. Usually disrespect of women is common for the typical male. This is a big issue because women are incorporated into our daily lives. As everything else, politics can cause issues as well. As with most political changes, just adapting to the rules and laws of the land is a big change. What makes it even harder is when this group just emigrates from a country with a dictatorship to one that is a democracy. Most are not used to the freedoms that are seen as an everyday right to most Americans. Even though there has not really been legislation made towards the Middle Eastern Americans, there have been times that immigration has been affected by the passing of laws that has limited that amount of Middle Eastern people in to the country. During the period of 1917-1924, there were three different laws that were passed by Congress that slowed the immigration from the Middle East nations. These laws were created to slow down the amount of immigration from nations across the world but each area had limits as to how many people could emigrate from there. With the passing of these laws, the Great Migration would come to an end. The policy that ended this was the Immigration Act of 1964, that eliminated the limits on immigration from nations. Recently though, there have been styles of laws created post 9/11, that are being used to quell the amount of people that may have terrorist ties. The FBI has been reported as using racial profiling to help them search for terror cells within the United States. At one point in time, Middle Eastern Americans were prohibited by law from having fundraisers because the FBI was afraid that the money was going to be used to fund terrorism. Thanks to the ACLU, many of the civil liberty violations that have occurred against the Middle Eastern Americans have been overturned so that these Americans can live their own American dreams.

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