Week 4 Reinvigorating the Search

The Process

While this week was supposed to be one of groundbreaking significance for the research aspect of this project, once again my efforts were thwarted by the powers-that-be. In this case manifested solely by the staff of the Hoover library, who after thorough discussion on the telephone and previous work I had done there in the past, still did not let me enter the archives, “no matter what!” To say the least I was thoroughly upset that I was not only out a weeks time, but also seemingly late for the weeks posting. The kindhearted nature of Professor Ivey allowed an extension that drove me straight into the arms of Internet archive sources. Wherein a plethora of information regarding the allocation of Iranian immigrants in California, United States foreign policy documentation and Iranian (English translations provided!) governmental and court documents. Through this wealth of information I have refined the overall topic so as to narrow my field of research and hopefully be able to relay adequate contextual/statistical information to narrate the devastating tale of immigrants who are largely the result of American and/or European foreign policy. So beginning from this post on, the Arab-Israeli conflict will be discussed only as it relates to the historical causality of the Iranian Revolution or American foreign policy following 9/11. While thoroughly attempting to drop two of the three initial topics to save myself time and sanity, I noticed that the narrative of immigration to California as it relates to these two topics is intertwined so homogeneously that adequate analysis of either would necessitate at least cursory analysis of the other. For that reason the topics are being condensed into time periods, one extending from the time just prior to the Iranian Revolution of 1979 to the period just before 9/11. The next period will extend, obviously, from 9/11 to the present, with a cutoff being applied most likely to the Bush administration and beyond that only prognostications will be possible. This week, because my ability to restrain my passion for research is limited, I dove more thoroughly into statistical information and governmental documentation of immigration trends than I did into more thorough, California-centric secondary source material. This will be provided in next weeks post seeing as I would like more than 24 hours to reanalyze set secondary sources. Let us begin!

How Did the Iranian Revolution Affect Immigration to the United States and California?

Migrationinformation.org has compiled large segments of information from the Department of Homeland Security that show the increased rates of foreign-born Iranians immigrating to the United States from 1980-2000. The following chart shows this phenomena.

The peak of Immigration occurred in the 1990’s as Iranian citizens began to realize the futility of their situation at home as a relatively peaceful succession of power occurred as Khomeini died and Khamenei took over. The destinations of these immigrants were usually large cities such as New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. According to the Migration Policy Institute roughly ten percent of Iranian immigrants decided to come to the San Francisco Bay Area, the second location behind Los Angeles/Orange County (Source:http://www.migrationinformation.org/USFocus/display.cfm?ID=404#8).

These statistics were recorded in the year 2000 where more than 50% of Iranian immigrants lived in the state of California. MPI provided that “according to Census 2000, 55.9 percent (158,613)” of Iranian immigrants in the United States lived in California. The popularity of California as a destination for immigrants is not new to the history of California. The state itself was built upon a richly diverse population of Mexican ranchers known as Californios, and different groups from all over the world that rushed to the Bay Area during the 1849 gold rush that followed Californian statehood in 1848. The connection of this trend will be more thoroughly explored when Guarding the Golden Door is integrated into this analysis. The aforementioned piece is a complex and thorough depiction of American and more specifically Californian immigration policy from 1882 to the present. 1882 being the year of the cataclysmic, racists Chinese Exclusion Act denying Chinese the right to immigrate into the United States in any significant numbers. While, for this weeks purposes only terse mention is made California’s surprisingly rough history of immigration, the tried and true facts of all of this history was not lost on Iranian immigrants fleeing social, religious or moral persecution.

In evaluating statistical information this week a trend was exposed in the socio-economic character of Iranian immigrants who fled the revolution. Twenty percent of all Non-Immigrant Visas issued to Iranians from 2000-2005 were for education, the second largest group following only temporary work visas (MPI, website). While not in itself a particularly valuable statistic when taken into account with the 2000 Census data that said 50.9% of foreign born Iranian immigrants had obtained a Bachelors degree or higher, it does suggest a trend that the educated, or those wishing to be educated, fled the repressive Iranian regime. Here is a map of the allocation of Iranian immigrants as of the 2000 census (MPI, website).

The Arab-Israeli Conflict Secondary Source Review

The Arab-Israeli Conflict

Overview
This is an analysis, much like the preceding one regarding the Islamic Revolution of 1979, that will examine four authors’ works in order to contextualize the events, politics and discourses that contribute to Palestinian or Jewish immigrants. Methodologically, this will be achieved by, analyzing the work of the “New Historians” of Israel and using their work to detail the aforementioned goals. Each author, is considered an academic forefather to the “New History” of Israel and therefore are more than qualified sources of information.


One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate
Author: Tom Segev

Segev dissects the British Mandate of Palestine so thoroughly that the documentation and citation sometime become overwhelming. His care and attention to detail provide a feeling of complete understanding of a nearly incomprehensible topic. The piece is broken into three parts that serve as a chronological barrier as well as a thematic one. The establishment of the British Mandate in Palestine in 1917, as a result of WWI created the possibility for the widening of a thousand year old rivalry between Arabs and Jews. Segev traces a ten-year line from the mandate in 1917 to 1927 where the rise of violence within occupied Palestine become so consistent that the next section of the book is simply labeled “Terror.” The forced relocation of and economic apartheid that was enforced on Palestinians to the benefit of Zionist immigrants and the Jewish economy (Segev, 286-8). Escalated conflagrations eventually led to an all out war over Jerusalem that began in 1928 over the use of a screen to shield male and female parishioners of the Western Wall (Segev, 298). Poor British leadership, the eventual threat of Hitler and WII, and the poor economic and strategic position of Palestine increased the potential for conflict that raged after the Yom Kippur incident and eventually spilled over into a massacre in Hebron in 1929 (Segev, 314). Political calculations within both Britain and the United States explicitly warned of antagonizing “the extremely important Jewish vote,” which subsequently led to the publishing of the White Paper that detailed British intent to support the establishment of a Jewish state of Israel (Segev, 338). This type of diplomatic maneuvering was lost on most Arab leaders who saw it as a clear signal of Western intent to promote Zionism at the expense of Islam; in many cases this concept was radicalized to the point of Jewish world domination conspiracies, much like those of Hitler.
The political strength of the Zionist Jewish Agency (JA) allowed it to outmaneuver its Arab counterparts and conduct sit-down meetings with high-level Western diplomats (Segev, 345-6). This gave the Zionists added confidence in their local dealings with Palestinian Arabs who still held the majority of the population during this time. This gave rise to both Arab and Jewish nationalist movements that were militantly demanding their own states respectively. These groups conducted open terrorist campaigns against the British, the United States and each other (Segev, 350). At this point in the 1930’s it seemed that “all crime [in Israel] took on a nationalist tinge,” that was turning lines in the sand into concrete pillboxes (Segev, 351). The British wished to undercut tensions by providing jobs for both Arabs and Jews in hopes that economic prosperity who lessen tensions as it had done for the Empire in India (Segev, 356). By pursuing these appeasing policies Britain was sending mixed messages when it would commit the slaughter of an entire Jewish or Arab village in retaliation to a terrorist attack. This would eventually lead to never ending waves of violence that would force peace loving Jews, Arabs and others into forced displacement.
As the 1930’s gave way to the 1940’s, pro-Zionist policies were beginning to show their effect to the population of Palestine and the local Arabs were not happy. According to Segev in the 1930’s the Jews were only 17 percent of the population of Palestine and by the mid 1940’s 30 percent of the country was Jewish, nearly 500,000 (Segevn, 378). As Arabs grew increasingly upset with the British policies and Zionist appropriation of their homeland, Zionists were gaining control of police forces and governmental structures (Segev, 381). The Arabs felt that they were being forcibly denied the rights to governance, but were also being forced to assist in the creation of a Jewish state. This in turn popularized Arab nationalist movements that were met by Zionist terrorist organizations, some of which were sponsored by Jewish governing agencies, such as the Haganah (Segev, 385). Increasing Zionist terrorist attacks and racist rhetoric on both sides deteriorated the political scene until the Zionist leadership determined that war with the Arabs was inevitable (Segev, 393). While this decision could be seen as potentially moot in an area where so much violence was occurring almost daily, but this was a conscious decision by Jewish leadership to use the advance of WWII to eliminate the Arab threat in their lands, that had already been guaranteed to them by the British. As these tensions flared, the British were forced into WWII and subsequently began to suppress dissent within the country violently (Segev, 425). Fearing the creation of a new Ireland in Palestine the British began to quickly determine an exit strategy that in no part took into consideration the stability of the region or political equality of Jews and Arabs.
WWII proved to be beneficial to the establishment of a Jewish homeland because Zionist leadership used the preoccupation of the British to politically ensure the creation of Israel. More radical elements of Zionist organizations declared war on the British in 1944 (Segev, 456). As the Zionist political establishment grew stronger during the war the Arab leadership was marginalized by it. Without a solid central leadership authority anyway Palestinian Arab’s were politically dead once Khalil al-Sakakini turned to the Nazi’s for help during the war. Thus as the war ended, leaving Britain economically insolvent, and the United States victorious the desire of the once great empire to control Palestine was fading more quickly than Britain’s economy. In order to speed up the exit of the British Jewish terrorists increased their attacks, which provoked a tired, poor British army to carry out the worst slaughter of Jews since the Bible (Segev, 476). “Black Sabbath” as the day was called, further reduced British intentions of mandating a peaceable transition of power, which was potentially impossible anyway as the new Hegemonic power, the United States had began to flex its political muscles in the region. The recent holocaust and its subsequent international exposure forced the hand of many humanitarian-minded policy makers to establish a Jewish state (Segev, 491). This may very well have been false seeing as many of the Jews displaced by the Holocaust were European and did not wish to live in Israel. The British gave control of Palestine to the United Nations who voted for partition and a two-state solution in 1947 (Segev, 496). A lack of Arab political subtlety and the weakness of the United Nations prevented the Arabs from obtaining concrete guarantees of a homeland. Many historians argue that the inability for Palestinian Arabs to mobilize was due to their lack of a nationalist spirit that was destroyed as many Arabs fled the terrorist campaigns of Zionists and WWII (Segev, 508). In May 1948 the British finally left Palestine and the much more politically, economically and militarily capable state of Israel invaded Arab territories mandated by the United Nations in order to reclaim Jerusalem (Segev, 518).
The 1948 war to reclaim Jerusalem displaced large portions of the Palestinian population who either fled or were forced into “Iron Cage” open-air prisons that Israel uses to control citizens of the occupied West Bank and Gaza.



The Iron Cage
Author: Rashid Khalidi

While the largest portion of information regarding the British Mandate period and the establishment of Israel is provided above, Khalidi provides a unique Arab perspective to the historiography of the conflict. Primarily his piece provides insight into the 1948-9 dispossession of Palestinians from their homes (Khalidi, XIII). Khalidi is important because rather than blaming the British or Israel for the failure of Palestine to achieve a homeland, he blames the lack of Palestinian leadership that is the result of multiple causes and historical events. He recognizes the intrinsic weakness of Palestine, compared to Israel or even the United States and uses this t contextualize his argument about weak central Palestinian leadership. He claims to not be a “revisionist” historian in the vein of other New Historians because he believes that there is no corpus of Palestinian history and therefore is not able to be “revised,” (Khalidi, XXXVIII). His historiographical output follows in the vein of Edward Said and the post-colonialist discourse that denies the validity of sources of history that are tinged by Imperialist or bigoted ideology. The issue of Palestinian immigration is not directly addressed in those terms. It is defined as the situation of being “stateless” while being subsequently detained within your own land by an allegedly foreign government (Khalidi, 189). Inevitably the failure of the Palestinian leadership to effectively capitalize on opportunities during the British Mandate have allowed for the potential of millions of refugees and “prisoners” as Khalidi refers to Palestinians in Israel. While not an incredibly thorough dissection of this piece was necessary, it does provide a unique context into the Palestinian viewpoint of British and Israeli occupation. When used in parallel with primary documents this source will be invaluable in narrating the struggles of Palestinians and why they would chose to leave their homeland.

Coming in the next days reviews of "The Israel Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War" by James L. Gelvin and "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" by Illan Pappe

The Shia Revival: The Effects of Khomeini's rise in the Scope of Middle Eastern History

The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future
Author: Vali Nasr

Vali Nasr is currently a Professor at Tufts University and formerly worked as a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School and was a Senior Adjunct Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. In the preface to this work he mentions that it is “not a work of historical scholarship,” which is seemingly contrary to the stated objective of this blog’s analysis. However, by providing “the new ideas and arguments…it brings to an understanding…the Islamic world and Middle East history and politics,” that are the core focuses of this study. How and why did the Iranian Revolution, The Arab-Israeli conflict, and the War on “Terror” come to produce such large amounts of refugees, where did they go and does the California Bay Area represent an adequate portion of these refugees? Beyond the fundamental reasons why Nasr’s work is valuable to this study, his sheer weight in the realm of Shia politics and culture suggest that any study that wishes to claim any range of historical accuracy need to at least analyze Nasr’s work cursorily.

The Shia Revival
This piece was written soon after the collapse of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and its main argument is that the fall of such a polarizing dictator would inevitably shift the political discourse of the entire Middle East. More so Nasr argues that, as a result of United States foreign policy, that the rise of the majority populations of Shia within Iraq will destabilize the entire region and cause a new struggle. Overtly, this is far to large in scope to contribute to my localized work, but the specific chapters and examples used in this piece provide unparalleled wisdom into the cultural, political, and practical reasons that so many immigrants fled the Middle East from 1950-Present. Before progressing into the bulk of his source work and methodology one concept must first be clearly stated, “Shias and Sunnis [Muslims] are not monolithic communities,” and therefore no action, statement or theory of any one person should be projected onto his community as a whole, because just as diversity in the United States proves, we are all different and individual (Nasr, 24).
The pieces of this work that are relevant to the purposes of this study are interspersed among plentiful peripheral examinations of Islamic culture and politics. Therefore I will divide the sections into easily digested pieces that will summate key themes relevant to our cause and leave out more cursory information. The Middle East is classified by centuries old conflicts between Sunni’s, Shias and various secular pairings of both (Nasr, 83). This dynamic feud was greatly altered by the rise of globalization, more specifically in the form of Nation-States that helped dissolve once strong communal ties and helped further fragment Middle Eastern society (Nasr, 83). Concepts such as modernization, democracy, fundamentalism, nationalism, secularism and an array of other terms have been used as blanket descriptions of Middle Eastern socio-political reasoning in the past, mostly by “Orientalist Scholars.” Nasr takes painful care to point out that these western concepts do not adequately address the complexities of Middle Eastern society and following an Edward “Saidian” discourse, one could suggest that this would be because of Western colonial/imperialist cultural biases. While not directly using the words of Said to claim this belief, Nasr shows how uniquely complex the society and political culture of the Middle East is, and therefore it, like the Western world cannot be boiled down into simple paradigms, at least not ones that are accurate.
While Khomeini was purging Iran of his Sunni, Secular and leftist opponents his neighbor Saddam Hussein was doing the very same thing to Shias, Kurds and members of the al-Da’wa party (Nasr, 140). These concurrent purges of various Middle East minority groups led to large scale migration, either directly forced or out of fear of persecution. Following the Iran-Iraq War that ended in 1988 fractious battles between different “fundamentalisms” took the place of dictatorial purges (Nasr, 148). For example clashes between Khomeini and the Saud rulers of Saudi Arabia led to violence between the two countries and a rise in tensions and political suppression of opponents in both states (Nasr, 151). The increasing tensions that followed the Revolution in 1979 had a ripple effect that spread further and further away from Iran and moved closer and closer to the United States. This has spread even to the United States since the beginning of the War on “Terror” following the 9/11 attacks. The presence of U.S. troops in first Afghanistan and eventually Iraq created a deeper, fractious split between Sunni’s and Shias who now were trying to use the power of the United States military to spur their political gains (Nasr, 206-7). Inevitably this led to violent, covert acts by Islamic fundamentalists groups (in this case Sunni) such as al-Qaeda and the Taliban fought to suppress Shia political power. These sectarian and religious divisions have only increased as the United States has increased its presence in the region. While not digressing to far from the point at hand, Nasr proves that the enduring divisions within the Middle Eastern community were exacerbated by not only the 1979 Islamic revolution but the 2001 War on “Terror” as well. The increased tension in the area has led to millions of refugees that have fled or been displaced by war, these statistics will be evaluated and presented as the blog progresses.

Book Review: The History and Impact of the Iranian Revolution

Khomeini: Life of the Ayatollah
Baqer Moin
This book, first published in 1999 is an in-depth analysis of the life, times and rise to power of the most key figure in the Iranian Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini. Primarily this piece was chosen in order to provide adequate historical information regarding the events and characters of the Revolution. Baqer Moin is a highly accredited scholar of Iran, specifically Khomeini of whom he was a contemporary and some would say “friend.” For this reason the piece must be evaluated in its proper historiographical context, regarding the biases of not only the author, but the zeitgeists of the period when it was written to adequately procure the necessary historical context and information that is required for this particular study. However, despite the proposed biases of Moin, he is widely regarded by westernized Iranian scholars for his accuracy and balance in portraying incredibly complex issues (Nafisi, 347).

A Brief History of the Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini was born in the Iranian village adequately named Khomein (Moin, 1). He was raised in a family of Mussavi Seyyeds who claim to be decedents of the prophet. Due to this, Khomeini had a deeply religious and mystic Islamic upbringing. He was orphaned very early on in his childhood, and true to Iranian custom another family member provided sustenance for the child, but rarely love or attention/gratitude. This forced Khomeini deep into Shia mystical practices that instilled in him “the constant themes of sadness and morbidity [that] in them reflect the ever-present sense among the Shi’a that they are an oppressed community who have been wronged historically,” (Moin, 17).
A digression into the early childhood of the Ayatollah is not unintentional, but very poignant in understanding why this man was able to popularize, so quickly, large amounts of Anti-American, Anti-West, Anti-Shah and pro-Islamic sentiment. Now to dig deeper into the base of the tree of the Revolution time must fast forward to Khomeini’s emergence as an Iranian political leader. In 1964 Khomeini was exiled from Iran because he had been able, for the first time in Iranian history to use the power of a marja (teacher of Islamic doctrine) to successfully motivate political sentiments (Moin, 127). This resulted in his expulsion from Iran and eventually he traveled from Turkey to Iraq to Paris, where he masterfully conducted a revolution outside of the borders of his own country. By capitalizing on character flaws and the obvious ties that the Shah of Iran had with Western powers, namely the United States, Khomeini was able to marginalize his opponents and sweep the sentiments of the population of Iran away from western Capitalism and towards Islamic Republicanism. (For a more thorough analysis of this issue I will provide the text from a paper that I wrote for my capstone course at California State University East Bay)
From outside of Iran, Khomeini had consolidated his power and triumphantly returned in February of 1979. Upon his return Khomeini had reached nearly prophetic levels of reverence within large portions of the Iranian community (Moin, 199). Despite the sweeping popularity of his rhetoric and the sense of “Shia nationalism” that was radiating out of his speeches, there was still a significant portion of the country that had become successful under the Shah and whose families had in some way shape or form acculturated to the Western style of life. This led Khomeini to violently suppress all of his opposition, all of it. This included children and “executions at the school [that] continued non-stop for several weeks,” (Moin, 207). The severe violence that Khomeini used to suppress political enemies was so swift and so successful that it forced large numbers of non-Muslim or Sunni Muslim Iranians to flee the country. Khomeini claimed supreme jurisprudence over Iran, documenting that he was God’s viceregent on earth or the vali-ye faqih (Moin, 225). The unconditional power that comes with claiming divine right did not miss Khomeini, who used his political position to stack the parliament with like-minded Islamic conservatives (Moin, 257). This megalomaniacal power grab continued through 1986 where Khomeini began to push his stance of “Islamic internationalism” with great fervor (Moin, 265). Khomeini used the bloodshed of the Iran-Iraq war to popularize the elimination of activists who had been arrested during the revolution (Moin, 278-9). Khomeini believed that any “direct or indirect” threats to the Islamic government in Iran should be dealt with by death (Moin, 280). The brutality of Khomeini’s juridical philosophies companied with his extremely fundamental reading of Shia doctrine and the Qur’an forced even marginal supporters of Khomeini to flee the potential persecution that they could face at any moment.
Understanding that this piece does not directly address immigration, the Bay Area or even the United States, it was chosen in order to provide the contextual baseline for the extremely difficult situation that many Iranian people found themselves in when the Revolution took hold of Iran. Moin thoroughly analyzes nearly every aspect of Khomeini’s political life and uses fantastic sources and unparalleled experience in order to provide even the most ignorant of readers an insight into the world of Iran, its people and its most polarizing leader.

Set a Course: Outline of Book Review

Book Reviews

The result of frequent technological issues has forced me to break my posts into their own specific chapters and keep them as short as possible,. To keep the continuity of the intertwined (yet, vastly different) narratives I will provide a quick outline prefacing the works that will be covered in the subsequent analysis. In order to address the substantial gap between necessary knowledge of Middle Eastern customary practices, cultures, religions, political structures and socio-economic systems, the book review section of the Blog will be structured as follows:

1. The Iranian Revolution
a. Works evaluated
i. After Khomeini: Iran Under His Successors by Said Amir Arjomand
ii. Khomeini: Life of the Ayatollah by Baqer Moin
iii. The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam will Shape the Future by Vali Nasr
2. The Arab-Israeli Conflict
a. Works evaluated
i. The Ethnic Cleaning of Palestine by Ilan Pappe
ii. The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood by Rashid Khalidi
iii. The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War by James L. Gelvin
iv. One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate by Tom Segev
3. While delving so deeply into the worlds of Iran and Israel time grew short on the possibility of providing three or more works on the “War on Terror” before Wednesday. Therefore, out of respect to historical accuracy, and to my cognitive abilities, these will be postponed until later in the week.

Unrelated, Strictly for entertainment The American Foreign Policy Penchant for Ivory

Internet Research: Refining the Plight of Middle Eastern Refugees(cont)

This would not fit in original post.

The War on Terror and its Fallout

After the September 11^th attacks in 2001 the United States began to assault perceived bastions of terrorism and terrorist supporters. While leading a coalition of other NATO countries the United States began an invasion of Afghanistan. Subsequently the invasion has led to millions of Afghani refugees that have been displaced, most of who have gone to Iran. This graph from the United States Center for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI),

Shows how nearly 3 million Afghanis have been displaced and are living in Iran or Pakistan as of December 31, 2007. This graph taken from the BBC shows the key locations of Afghan refugees that have been displaced since 2001.

The majority of these IDP’s live in refugee camps that are denoted on the above map by blue boxes with the letter “R” in the center. Much like the Iranians and Palestinians the specific locations of Afghanis within the United States are difficult to find but will be provided later in the study. Further analysis of the refugee camps, their effects and how they tie into the historical discourse of American foreign policy; exemplified on a microcosmic level by the political history of the Bay Area, specifically as it represents the history of U.S. immigration policy.

Internet Research: Refining the Plight of Middle Eastern Refugees

Internet Research

Overview

This week I treaded into the turbulent waters of the “internet database” and began to sift through the much and mire in order to compose a coherent study on Middle Eastern immigration to the Bay Area. Remember the three main topics: the Iranian Revolution 1979, the Arab-Israeli conflict (Palestine) and the War on Terror. For the sake of simplicity I will divide these into sub-categories to provide easier access to the progress of the study as the weeks progress.

The Iranian Revolution and its fallout

“On 1 February 1979…the undisputed leader of one of the major revolutionary movements in modern history,” arrived back in Tehran, victorious (Moin, 199). Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, one of the most polarizing figures of the 20^th century, successfully deposed the Shahinshah (King of Kings) of Iran and defeated the United States C.I.A. in a political battle for the fate of Iran. Khomeini carried with him dreams of creating an Islamic Republic that would adhere to Shia Islamic values. Due to his fundamental religious ideology many Iranian Sunni Muslims, Baha’is, Parsis and other religious groups were forced to flee the country or face persecution. Khomeini espoused the belief that “Criminals should not be tried. The trial of a criminal is against human rights,” and therefore anyone who was in contradictory belief to the new supreme ruler of Iran would have been wise to leave the country (Moin, 208). This included a large segment of the former governmental authority that was loyal to the Shah. Everyone who worked with the Americans was in danger of Khomeini retribution. After the revolution Khomeini proclaimed, “Though freedom has been achieved, the roots of imperialism and Zionism have not yet been severed. To achieve real independence we have to remove all forms of American influence, whether economic, political, military or cultural,” (Moin, 213). These very direct threats led to a massive migration of Iranian populations away from the Islamic Republic and towards Afghanistan, Iraq and the United States. While the vast majority of Iranian refugees fled to Afghanistan and Iraq significant portions fled to European countries or the United States for fear of marginalization by the Islamic community within neighboring countries. According to the Development Research Center (DRC) as of 1983 291,040 Iranians had immigrated to the United States and were living in the country under the status of “Global Migrant.”

As a result of Khomeini’s harsh policies the United States adopted a special status for Iranian refugees that provided them protection in the form of overseas resettlement programs. A community consisting of “Baha’is, Armenian and Assyrian Christians, converts to Christianity, Jews, Mandaeans, and Zoroastrians,” that were forced to flee Iran were granted “Priority Two or P-2” status by the United States government and were subsequently subsidized for relocation (Shanfield, 5). From 1980 to 2002 the United States has relocated roughly 58,000 Iranians strictly on the basis of religious affiliation (Shanfield, 5). The following graphic taken from the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) shows the comparisons of how many Iranian asylum cases were granted from 1980-2004 against asylum cases from other countries as well as providing the isolated data from 2004 that shows decreased levels of asylum cases granted approval.

The decreasing amount of asylum cases granted approval for Iranians suggests that the immediate humanitarian fallout from the 1979 revolution is receding and the increasing tensions between the United States and the Iranian Republic are increasingly dividing the two countries. While this does not specifically point to any Bay Area-centric events, it does show how large segments of the Iranian population were forced out immediately following the Islamic Revolution and how a remainder of the population needed assistance from the international community to protect their various religious and cultural communities from the incursion of the Islamic Republic. There is a plethora of information following the same avenue of American asylum cases and the formulation of the “Specter Amendment” that included Iranians in the Cold War legislation that was used to protect USSR religious refugees. This will be further expanded in the coming weeks, as scholarly books will be used to contextualize the historical relevance of immigration legislation regarding Iranian refugees.

The Arab-Israeli Conflict and its Fallout

Following WWII and the British Mandate of Palestine, the state of Israel was formed out of the former husk of the Ottoman Empire. Using the political power created by the Allies recent victory, the United States and Britain established a Jewish state in the center of the Arab Middle East at the expense of the Palestinian people. While the reasons for the creation of Israel are as varied as the political battle lines drawn in the country contemporarily, the results are even more complicated. The forging of various levels of Zionist political extremity and the subsequent Islamic counterbalances created a humanitarian and political disaster in Israel that’s effects would ripple as far away as the United States. According to the aforementioned Global Migrant Study done in 1983, more than 122, 000 immigrants came to the United States from Israel that year. This is significant because, while no direct international conflict was underway in 1983 in Israel more than 100,000 immigrants decided that the country was unfit to live in. Israeli governmental practices of housing destruction, residency restriction, deportation, unlawful retention, settlement building in Palestinian neighborhoods have contributed to the international perception that the Palestinian people are subjugated within their own lands. B’TSelem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, published a graph that shows the number of Palestinians who have had their residency rights revoked since 1967 in East Jerusalem, 8,558. The frequency of residency revocations within East Jerusalem reached its peak in 2006, showing that despite increasing international humanitarian efforts that the Israeli government is set on eliminating the Palestinian influence, at least within East Jerusalem. Here is a video of Muhammad Khamis, who was removed from his home near Hebron in the 1950’s and now is forced to live in subhuman conditions. http://www.btselem.org/English/Video/20091223_Maale_Adummim_Muhammad_Khamis.asp

While the 2009 statistics for Asylum Seekers and Refugees for Israeli occupied territories were not available the previous years statistics were and are contained in the following table.

Nearly two million refugees suggest that the problems within the Israeli occupied territories have not been solved by nearly seventy years of subjugation, suggesting that the necessity for changing policy is becoming clearer. As of today I have been unable to locate any information regarding the allocation of these refugees but that will be coming in subsequent posts. However, the current political situation in Israel, and for that matter the United States, is so delicate that information regarding Israeli governmental strictures is hard to find from any source that is not strictly pro-Palestinian. Therefore it will take much time and effort to discern relevant statistics from propaganda and for that reason I did not want to rush into providing statistics or policy information until I am positive that the sources are credible.

Introduction

Topic

An evaluation of whether the influx of Middle Eastern (Christian, Muslim, Jew, or other) refugees into the United States is significantly represented by the Bay Area. Specific focus will be given to the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the Arab-Israeli conflict 1948-present and the results of American foreign policy from the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act to the 2001 War on Terror. Through expert analysis of government documents, personal accounts, news articles, scholarly articles and books I will try to deduce whether any significant portion any of Middle Eastern refugee group can be represented by their community within the greater San Francisco Bay Area. This is being undertaken with little to no prior knowledge of Middle Eastern immigration to the Bay Area and is intended to use historiographical methods to trace the evolution of the initial displacement of these groups through their eventual relocation to the United States. By analyzing the causes of immigration and their subsequent effects I will determine whether or not there is significant evidence to conclude that the Bay Area is a popular destination for Middle Eastern immigrants.

Why study Middle Eastern Immigration to the Bay Area?

The historical significance of immigration is obvious. Massive movements of people, culture and political ideologies will greatly influence not only the land they immigrate to, but also the one that they left. By analyzing the reasons for immigration, the scale of the immigration and where the communities immigrated to, it becomes easier to understand contemporary political discourses, cultural strife and to some extent, estimate the future nature of domestic/foreign policy of both the sending and receiving countries. On top of these tangible outcomes, by studying immigration into the Bay Area we can more accurately assess the nature of economic and political instabilities within specific communities because greater understanding of the foundations of the community can be achieved. However, moving away from sweeping generalizations that can be deduced from centuries of complex political, cultural and practical experience, this study is being undertaken for the purposes of educating and understanding the effects of massive global events on the Bay Area.

Author

An avid academic and student of history, I have studied the languages, religions and cultures of the Middle East for the length of my stay at California State University East Bay where I am attaining my BA in History. My studies of the Middle East have been contextualized with structured coursework in both Persian and Arabic. While not fluent in either language, I am able to read and translate Persian/Arabic documents with great care and therefore provide a unique historical context that is rarely achieved by Western born writers or historians. Beyond an academic obsession with the complexities of the Middle East I have labored to dissect American political institutions and the history of American domestic/foreign policy. My unique perspective and avid pursuit of academic quality and transparency has won me numerous scholarships, awards and accolades for the pursuit of history, as well as an impeccable academic record. While not born in the San Francisco Bay Area I have grown up here and attended High School at De La Salle in Concord, which allows me to describe and analyze an area that I am exceedingly knowledgeable of its diversity, political workings, culture and people.