Palestinian American Day – more info
About:
The first Palestinians who immigrated to the United States arrived after 1908, when the Ottoman Empire passed a new conscription law mandating Palestinians into the military. These Palestinians were overwhelmingly Christians, and only a minority of them were Muslims. Palestinian immigration began to decline after 1924, with a new law limiting the number of immigrants, as well as the Great Depression, which heavily reduced immigration.
Palestinian exodus
The population in the United States began to increase after World War II. The 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 caused many Palestinians to immigrate in the 1948 Palestinian exodus, most as refugees. During the 1950s, many Christians from Ramallah started immigrating to the states, then followed by Muslims from nearby towns. However, the greatest wave of Palestinian immigration began in 1967 after the Six-Day War, or as Middle Easterners and North Africans call it the June War. This wave of immigrants reached its peak in the 1980s.
Modern history
After the Immigration and Nationality act of 1965 was enacted, many Palestinians started immigrating again into the United States. Most Palestinians that immigrated to the United States in this period were more educated than the Palestinians that arrived before 1967, to the schools sponsored by the United Nations and the increasing number of universities in the Middle East.
Multicultural Americans 