WI The US HAd an Organised Substantial Arab-American Community?

If it was bigger than the Jewish one over 12 million, I would guess and it was organised like the US Irish were how would it change America and the world and let's say it contained a substantial christian arab minority! Also where could they have come from and what would be the major centres in the US be for them? What would be the average congressperson/ senator's attitude towards Israel be if indeed it existed at all as a state!
What would be the positives surely some on US cuisine! and the negatives if any. Also any impact on US dealings with non arab close ally Turkey and unfriendly non Arab Iran! Would it lead to democratisation at a much wider level in the Middle East as Arabs here wouldn't tolerate what tends to happen under Arab regimes!
 
It doesn't appear organised and it's most famous son is Sirhan Sirhan, if i'm not mistaken. My OP is making it larger than the Jewish community, which is maybe 12 million in that case, my Arab American community would be large, organised and vocal although not religiously homogenised.
 
It's effects on US middle east policy would depend on a number of factors; when the Arab community becomes organized, how it does so, how relatively wealthy the Arab community is, and when exactly whiteness is extended to them.

But US support for Israel- at least it's domestic motivations- really coalesced in the late 1960's due to a sort of "perfect storm" of factors; the Jewish population was solidly middle class after the 50's, Jewish community groups and organizations were created or growing on a national scale and Israel was a sentimental rallying point for the disparate sub-communities, and the concept of whiteness was expanding, so Jews were no longer considered weird or fundamentally different, just "ethnic".


If the first waves of, say, levantine and yemeni immigrants in the 1900's are larger, and stay, then Arab (christians, at least) may have an overall development arc similar to the OTL Italian community. Would it develop over similar lines to the OTL Jewish community? I don't know. Probably not. The fact that there is a religious divide probably means whiteness would be extended to Arab christians way, way before it is to Muslims, much like OTL.

This could possibly affect American involvement in, say, Lebanon, or affect it's attitudes towards the Palestine mandate issue, if these Arab christian community groups arrived in the 1900's and had a good forty or fifty years to become white and get some money into an organized community, but considering US immigration policy at the time, it would take a pretty interesting ATL for that to happen.
 

Germaniac

Donor
You may not be able to expand the Arab population but you can certainly expand the muslim population. Make America more receptive to asian immigration after ww2 and you may see more indonesians coming in, and certainly you could find a way to enlarge the turkish immigration in the early 20th
 
The American Armenian community, which must be much smaller than America's Arab community, certainly seems to be making its prescence felt to a much larger extent through the Kardasians!
 
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