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).