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High Status Immigrants: A Statistical Profile of Iranians in the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Mehdi Bozorgmehr
Affiliation:
The Study of Iranians, Sociology at UCLA, Center for Near Eastern Studies, UCLA, Los Angeles
Georges Sabagh
Affiliation:
The Study of Iranians, Sociology at UCLA, Center for Near Eastern Studies, UCLA, Los Angeles

Extract

Iranians constitute one of the most numerous new immigrant groups from the Middle East, and one of the highest status foreign-born groups in the United States. Yet there are few published studies documenting their immigration to the United States, and their characteristics. An understanding of different aspects of Iranian adaptation to the United States requires a basic knowledge of their immigration history, and demographic, social and economic characteristics.

This paper presents the first systematic and comprehensive profile of Iranians in the U.S. based on the most recent available statistical data. The sources for this analysis are: (1) all available published reports from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and from the 1980 U.S. Census; (2) INS data tapes on Iranian immigrants admitted to the U.S.from 1972 to 1986; and (3) the 5 percent sample tape from the 1980 U.S. Census of population.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 Association For Iranian Studies, Inc

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Footnotes

1

This is an updated and substantially revised version of a paper presented by the first author at the 1985 annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association of America in New Orleans. The research for this paper was made possible partially by grant from the National Science Foundation, and a grant from the Research Committee of Academic Senate, UCLA. We acknowledge the assistance of Carolyn Rosenstein, and thank her and Ivan Light for their comments.

References

2 Ansari, Abdolmaboud Iranian Immigrants in the United States: A Case Study of Dual Marginality. Associated Faculty Press. 1988Google Scholar; Askari, Hossein Cummings, John T. and Izbudak, MehmetIran's Migration of Skilled Labor to the United States.Iranian Studies 10:3-39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cummings and Izbudak, 1977; Jamshid Momeni, “Size and Distribution of Iranian Ethnic Group in the United States: 1980.” Iran Nameh, 19842:17-21.; Sabagh, Georges and Bozorgmehr, MehdiAre the Characteristics of Exiles Different from Immigrants? The Case of Iranians in Los Angeles.Sociology and Social Research, 1987, 71:77-84.Google Scholar

3 Lorentz, John H. and Wertime, John T.Iranians.Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, edited by Thernstrom, Stephen. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.1980, pp. 521-524.Google Scholar They report that the number of Iranian immigrants entering the U.S. was 130 during the 1842-1903 period, increasing to 780 between 1925 and 1932. According to these authors, immigration data on Iranians are not available for 1904-1924 and 1933-1944 periods. Therefore, only 910 Iranians immigrated to the U.S. for nearly a century (1842-1944). As there are no references to sources for these data in Lorenz and Wertime (1980), the origins of these figures are unknown. Although data on Iranian immigrants only were reported by INS for 1949, their number was very small (195). In any case, it is clear that Iranian immigration to the United States before 1950 was negligible.

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19 Turkey is among the few countries that do not require visas from Iranians. Consequently, according to INS tapes, the number of Iranian new arrivals who came through Turkey to the U.S. increased from 6 in 1979 to 536 in 1986.

20 Refugee Reports, “ Statistical Issue.” December, 1986, 7:12.

21 See Appendix I for an explanation of the procedure followed to obtain the population estimate.

22 Los Angeles Times, “In Iran, U.S. Is Still the Great Satan.’” March 10, 1986, part I, p. 14.

23 Los Angeles Times, “Creators of Iranian Yellow Pages Let Culture Do Talking.” January 12, 1985, part II, p. 6.; and “Poetry Links Iranians to Lost Home.” September 28, 1983, part V, p. 1; 1986, op. cit.; and Time, “The New Ellis Island.” June 1983, 13:18-25.

24 Iran News “In the Mirror of Exile” (in Persian).October 20,1987, pp. 15, 19, 56.

25 In general, an SMSA includes one or more counties which have certain metropolitan characteristics and commuting patterns.

26 U.S. Congress, 1965

27 Since there is some evidence that the vast majority of Iranians in the U.S. are of urban origin, comparisons made with urban population of Iran are more meaningful than with the total population.

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29 See Table 3 for sources.

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31 The rate of labor force participation of Iranian females is lower than that of both native and recent immigrant females.

32 Sabagh and Bozorgmehr, 1986, op. cit.

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34 The rate for natives includes farmers who are mostly self-employed. (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1984, op. cit.)

35 Light and Bonacich, 1988, op. cit.

36 The lower mean income of natives and recent immigrants could be partly attributed to their much higher ratio of females to males in the labor force and the much lower income of women compared to men, particularly among natives. (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1984, op. cit.

37 About 90 percent of recent Indian immigrants know English well or very well, 46.1 percent have a graduate college degree, and 50.4 percent have managerial and professional occupations (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1984, op. cit.).

38 The rate of self-employment for immigrants from India was about 5 percent. Of course, students among Indian immigrants depressed the income of the group as a whole (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1984, op. cit.).