Arab Population by State 2023 (2024)

FAQs

Which U.S. state has the most Arabs? ›

Michigan has the highest number and percentage of Arab Americans at 211,405 and 2.1%, respectively.

Dearborn, Michigan, is the largest Muslim community in the U.S. Overall the largest proportion of Arab Americans is found in the North East where about 40 percent of all Arab Americans live.

The remainder are made up of those from Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Iraq, Libya, the Gulf Cooperation Council, and other Arab nations. There are nearly 3.5 million Arab Americans in the United States according to The Arab American Institute.

In California, 740,219 people belong to the MENA community, of which an estimated 373,012 are Arab American. This map shows the percentage of MENA community members who are Arab Americans living in cities throughout Southern California. Los Angeles, El Cajon, San Diego, Irvine, and Anaheim have the highest percentages.

As of 2023, Dearborn, Michigan, has become the largest city with an Arab majority in the US, with 55% of its 110,000 population claiming Middle Eastern or North African roots in the latest census.

New waves of immigration came from the Middle East in the late 20th century, Muslims and Christians from Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. Dearborn has the largest Muslim population in the United States per capita and the largest mosque in North America.

New York, Detroit, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington D.C., and Minneapolis are the top six metropolitan areas. Nearly 75% of all Arab Americans live in just twelve states: California, Michigan, New York, Texas, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, Ohio, Minnesota, Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

While most early 20th-century Arab immigrants to the United States were Christians, those who moved to Dearborn in the 1920s were mainly Muslims from southern Lebanon.

The greatest number, 517, resided in California. There were five additional states that reported over 200 Saudi Arabians: Colorado, Florida, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia. There are a variety of reasons why so few Saudi Arabians choose to permanently live in the United States.

New York, Detroit, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington D.C. are the top five metropolitan areas with Arab American populations, though there are also large numbers of Arab Americans in Florida, Texas, New Jersey, Ohio, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

Where is the largest Arab population outside the Middle East? ›

Since the end of the civil war in 2002, Lebanese traders have become re-established in Sierra Leone. According to Saudi Aramco World, the largest concentration of Arabs outside the Arab World is in Brazil, which has 9 million Brazilians of Arab ancestry.

Arab American Population

About 90 percent live in urban areas. 66 percent of Arab Americans live in 10 states. 33 percent live in California, Michigan and New York/New Jersey. The cities with largest Arab American populations are Los Angeles, Detroit, New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C.

Arab immigrants living in the United States total between 1.5 million and 3.5 million, and have been growing in number each decade. New York's Arab population, at 405,000, ranks third in the U.S. after California and Michigan. Despite the large numbers, little health research has focused on this population.

According to the Arab American Institute Foundation, there are approximately 80,000 Americans of Arab descent in Georgia, of which approximately 50,000 reside in Atlanta.

Little Arabia is an ethnic enclave in western Anaheim, California, the center for Orange County's Arab Americans, who number more than 24,000 (As of 2000). It has been referred to as "Little Gaza" which was a riff on the nearby Garza Island neighborhoods.

THE SHORT ANSWER

The Arab-American community in Detroit began with a small group of Syrian and Lebanese merchants who immigrated in the late 1800s. Many left their lives as peasants in the rural Middle East for the rapidly industrializing West, sometimes passing through Ellis Island on their way to Detroit.

The State of California has the largest number of Arab Americans in any state, with the Los Angeles area constituting the largest cluster in the state.