Historical immigration of Arabs to United States
The relations between the Arabs and the Americans continue to remain vivid even though the Americans first moves to contain the continually immigrating Arabs led to a rift between the two countries.
The working together of the two countries dates back to the mid 18th century when the first group from the Arab countries immigrated into the United States (Peacock, Thornton & Inman, 2007).
The main objective of these immigrants was to run from the continued famine in their land due to the collapse of Silk Company. Therefore, they opt to move to the border of the United States to seek assistance over their deteriorating economic status.
However, they never followed the set procedures of entry into America making America regard them as intruders into their land. Over time, the people remained unrecognized and therefore did not receive any help from the American government.
Shipler (2004) notes that earlier on before the personalized attempts by the Arabs to immigrate to America, the Spanish had earlier transported some of the Arabs from their country to work as slaves in America.
Therefore, by the earlier 15th century some of the Arabs had settled in the some of the American states such as California.
Upon the transportation of these slaves back to their country, the other slaves who had already settled in different unknown places especially the slums of California acted as an avenue to absorb more Arabs into the region in the later centuries.
Apart from the slaves brought to America by the Spanish explorers, the first attempt to immigrate from Arab to America was made in the mid 18th century by the Wahab Family as they moved to occupy the outer banks of the Northern part of California.
During this time, a king from Arab in the Wahab family set to go to the land of America and establish an Islamic religion. This acted as an avenue to spread Islamic religion to all other regions that did not practice the Islamic religious beliefs (Shipler, 2004).
Therefore, the king together with his family and other members of the Arab family accompanied him to an island in the North of California where he bought a colonial land and settled.
Thereafter, they built the first Islamic mosque and gathered as a family to worship. Ocracoke Island called Island Inn, a hotel that still exists up to date. The group established a Wahab village of Muslims that later absorbed more immigrants o America.
Visibility of the Arab immigrants after Palestine/Israel war
Later on between 1828 and 1902, other immigrants moved to America in different missions.
A Christian missionary, Hadj Philip Tedro, made his way into America through the Camel Driver Experiment in an attempt to establish a route from Texas to California during the Gold Rush period (Rothbart & Korostelina, 2006).
In his attempt to spread Christianity during this period, he establishes in California as an immigrant. Later, his family to settle there follows him. In 1840, Ahmad Bin Na’man landed on the New York City through a ship. In 1880s, large groups from Arab landed in America.
The group majorly comprised Christians from Greater Syria who flee their country in search of economic assistance. Shipler (2004) asserts that the Arabs who lived as peddlers since they lacked education and skills remained poor and confined to their own churches and other societies not to mingle with the Americans.
Nevertheless, their number increased highly with records showing that by late 1930s, they had hit the 350, 000 mark in population.
Regardless of the increasing number of the Arab immigrants, they remained invisible for long periods until the onset of the Palestine/Israel war.
This was mainly because, first, the Americans viewed them as a source of cheap labor for their industries and therefore did not want them leaving their countries since they recorded increased output in their production.
Moreover, the immigrants being unknowledgeable did not regard the mistreatments they received from the Americans as tough compared to the Ottoman regime in Arab in which the king and the empire treated its citizens ruthlessly.
Therefore, they found peace in the daily duties, getting sufficient needs for each passing day. In addition, the Arab immigrants remained vigilant and diligent to the American law, always abiding with the law in all their operations. Nevertheless, late in the years they became violent breaking the moments of invisibility in them.
The onset of the visibility of the Arab migrants dates back to the 19th century when the Palestine and Israel started scrambling over land, an incidence that led to war between the two countries. Regardless of the two countries having different religious beliefs, they did not discriminate over one another.
The war on whom to control the land at the border between the countries brought distinct differences which each maintaining possession of the same.
The Jewish argued from the biblical perception that the land is their promised land according to the scriptural reading while the Palestine residents maintain that they have been the inhabitants of the land and therefore, they are the official owners of the land.
This led to war between the two countries between 1948 and 1949 (Shipler, 2004).
The European continent later developed a scheme to identify people as countries in the nineteenth century and therefore already established countries in Europe traced their members around the world registering them and concentrating them in their land.
The proportionality of the land given depended on the population density of the area and therefore most leaders ensured they get as much population of their members as possible. Upon tracing of their members in America, the Americans came out to establish the number of Arab immigrants in the area.
Through this, the Arab immigrants became visible in America, leading to implementation of a law to guide further immigration of Arabs into America.
This affected the lives of the Arabs living in America since most of them lived in the area illegally. The records from the registration recorded an approximated number of 10, 000 Arab-American immigrants.
The massive onset of immigration of the Arabs occurred between 1921 and 1939, when other countries such as Germany and Britain planned a war against the Ottoman Empire through the preparation of Husayn bin Ali to take over the empire.
During this period, Palestine defended the Ottoman Empire creating a rift between Israel and Palestine. Britain and France later built a declaration to weaken the Ottoman Empire, created several provinces and promoted division of power among other kingpins of the Arab kingdom.
The war made most of the Israel inhabitants to fly to America to seek refuge raising the number of refugees to a notable proportion of the American population. Arab became a country of continued terrorism up to the later days of 1939 when the United Nations developed a partition plan of the land.
The fighting between Palestine and Israel between 1947 and 1949 saw massive number of refugees move to America. Volkan (1997) records that an approximated number of 700, 000 refugees flee to different places out of Arab during the operation by the Zionist militia.
Out of this group, approximately 75% flee to America increasing the number of immigrants in the region. Fortunately, through the action of the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) the immigrants receive settlement in various areas providing them with the basic needs required.
The bombing of the World Trade Centre of 1993, left Arab-American immigrants insulted and threatened. The government of America believed that the Arab community was behind the terror especially Israel and therefore targeted the Islamic immigrants.
The Arabs denounced both the terror and the harsh judgment to the Americans and offered prayers to the fallen Americans in the incidence (Peacock et al., 2007).
However, the American government maintained that the immigrants be transported back to their country, until the election of George Bush as the president of America, who issued a passionate plea for the Arab immigrants.
Post 9/11 discrimination and further visibility of Arab immigrants
The number of hate crimes towards the Muslim Americans increased in the September 11, 2001. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the number of such cases increased greatly by 1,700 per cent (Peacock et al., 2007).
The inhabitants of America developed negative stereotype and attitude towards the Muslim Arab immigrants. Therefore, the Muslim Arabs continued to experience threats and discrimination from other groups in the region especially regarding racial and religious animosity.
According to Peek (2011), most Americans regarded most Muslims as terrorists, therefore, rarely involved them in their operations. Since then the lives of the Arab immigrants continued to deteriorate with the American government threatening to depot them to their country.
The Americans further believed that the monolithic group act, think, and behave in the same manner leading to the keeping of distance from any Muslim regardless of their proof to be harmless.
The cultural visibility of the Muslims led to further discrimination from the Americans since none of the people wanted to associate with them. The aftermath of September 2011 left heightened the rate of discrimination of Arab Muslims even though such discriminations were evident in the early years (Peek, 2011).
Furthermore, the aftermath proved a growing number of the Arabs in American recording 1.6million in the year that ended 2010. Different people express different point of argument concerning the growing number of Arab immigrants relating it to the frequent incidences in America.
Muslims come out in large numbers to defend themselves against the claims of terrorism indicating the rising number of the immigrants (Volkan, 1997).
This raised concerns from the Native Americans who clash with the Muslims, accusing the government of inability to control the rising incidences of terrorism by the Arab-Americans.
References
Peacock, J. L., Thornton, P. M., & Inman, P. B. (2007). Identity matters: Ethnic and sectarian conflict. New York: Berghahn Books.
Peek, L. A. (2011). Behind the backlash: Muslim Americans after 9/11. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Rothbart, D., & Korostelina, K. V. (2006). Identity, morality, and threat: Studies in violent conflict. Lanham: Lexington Books.
Shipler, D. K. (2004). The working poor: Invisible in America. New York: Knopf.
Volkan, V. D. (1997). Bloodlines: From ethnic pride to ethnic terrorism. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.