History of Middle Eastern people in Metro Detroit
aspect of history
The Detroit metropolitan area has one of the largest concentrations of people of Middle Eastern origin, including Arabs and Chaldo-Assyrians in the United States. As of 2007 about 300,000 people in Southeast Michigan traced their descent from the Middle East. Dearborn's sizeable Arab community consists largely of Lebanese people who immigrated for jobs in the auto industry in the 1920s, and of more recent Yemenis and Iraqis. In 2010 the four Metro Detroit counties had at least 200,000 people of Middle Eastern origin. Bobby Ghosh of TIME said that some estimates gave much larger numbers. From 1990 to 2000 the percentage of people speaking Arabic in the home increased by 106% in Wayne County, 99.5% in Macomb County, and 41% in Oakland County.
From 1990 to 2000 Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb counties had a combined increase of 16,632 people who were born in Iraq. The publication "Arab, Chaldean, and Middle Eastern Children and Families in the Tri-County Area" of the From a Child's Perspective: Detroit Metropolitan Census 2000 Fact Sheets Series states that "Arab and Chaldean representation cannot be determined" in that figure. During the same period there was an increase of 7,229 people born in Lebanon.
Arab Americans
By 2007 Metro Detroit, if defined as Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, and Washtenaw counties, had the United States's largest Arab American population, larger than that of Greater Los Angeles if that region was defined as Los Angeles, Orange, and Ventura counties.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “History of Middle Eastern people in Metro Detroit” is aspect of history. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through History, Middle and Eastern, not as a finished interpretation.
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