Iranian citizens abroad

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The term Iranian citizens abroad or Iranian/Persian diaspora refers to the Iranian people born in Iran but living outside of Iran with their children.

By most estimates, between two and three million Iranians live in North America, Europe, Persian Gulf States, Turkey and Australia (2008).^[1][2] For the most part they emigrated after the Islamic revolution in 1979. A small percentage has returned to Iran since.

Their combined net worth is $1.3 trillion (2006 est.)^[3] In 2000, the Iran Press Service reported that Iranian expatriates had invested between $200 and $400 billion in the United States, Europe, and China, but almost nothing in Iran.^[4] In Dubai, Iranian expatriates have invested an estimated $200 billion (2006).^[5] Migrant Iranian workers abroad remitted less than two billion dollars home in 2006.^[6]

Contents 1 History 1.1 First phase: 1950-1979 1.2 Second phase: 1979-1995 1.3 Third phase: 1995-present 2 Statistics by country 3 See also 4 References 5 External links

[edit] History

Emigration since 1950 can be organized into three major waves that roughly correspond to socioeconomic status and motivations for migration, including both forced and voluntary departures. Despite some degree of overlap, the three phases provide a framework for conceptualizing the global Iranian diaspora.

[edit] First phase: 1950-1979

The first significant phase of emigration from Iran, beginning in 1950 and lasting until the 1979 revolution, was triggered by Iran’s slow economic recovery and resumption of oil production after World War II. Revenue from oil exports permitted a relatively sudden change in Iranian society from traditionalism to modernization, motivating middle- and upper-class families to send their children abroad for higher education as a means of ensuring socioeconomic security and political access upon return.

In the 1977-1978 academic year, about 100,000 Iranians were studying abroad, of whom 36,220 were enrolled in US institutes of higher learning; the rest were mainly in the United Kingdom, West Germany, France, Austria, and Italy. In the 1978-1979 academic year, the number of Iranian students enrolled in the United States totaled 45,340, peaking at 51,310 in 1979-1980. According to the Institute of International Education, more Iranian students studied in the United States at this time than students from any other country.

After the revolution, not only did many of these students opt to remain in the West, but many of their relatives joined them.

Also included in this first period were families closely associated with the monarchy as members of the government, military personnel, or bankers. These royalist sympathizers fled during the early stages of the revolution, often with significant liquidated assets in hand.

Finally, another population that fled in the initial phase were members of religious minorities, such as the Baha'is, and religio-ethnic groups, such as the Jews, Armenians, and Assyrians. Anticipating persecution, a disproportionate number of these marginalized populations left as soon as cracks appeared in the Pahlavi regime.

[edit] Second phase: 1979-1995

A second phase of emigration took place after the Islamic Revolution. Socialist and liberal elements were the first to leave, followed by young men who fled military service and the Iran-Iraq War, followed by young women and families, escaping overly confining gender restrictions. Having a daughter was a decisive factor in a family's decision to flee since the post-revolution era forced women to wear the veil, offered decreased educational possibilities, and enforced obedience to male kin.

Because the second wave included large numbers of professionals, entrepreneurs, and academics, it accelerated the "brain drain," a term used to describe the emigration of a country's most educated and highly skilled for better opportunities in another country.

According to the Ministry of Culture and Higher Education, right before the revolution and subsequent closure of all the universities in 1980, there were 16,222 professors teaching in Iran's higher education institutions. When the universities reopened in 1982, this figure had plummeted to 9,042.

Similarly, the Iran Times estimated that one out of every three (5,000) physicians and dentists left after the revolution. In addition to the reduction of manpower, studies estimate that the flight of capital from Iran shortly before and after the revolution is in the range of $30 to $40 billion.

It is important to note that many members of both the first and second emigration waves did not consider their departure permanent. To the contrary, many locked up their homes, packed a few suitcases, and viewed leaving as a temporary sojourn from their lives back in Iran, which would resume when the revolutionary government was overturned. However, with time, the possibility of a permanent return has grown increasingly unlikely.

[edit] Third phase: 1995-present

Finally, a more recent third wave of emigration has surfaced over the last decade, from roughly 1995 to the present. This wave consists of two very distinct populations — highly skilled individuals leaving universities and research institutions, a continuation of a previous trend, and working-class labor migrants and economic refugees, sometimes with lower education levels and less transferable skills than previous emigrants.

From 1980 to 2004, more than one out of every four Iranian immigrants was a refugee or asylee.^[7] In the year 2000 alone, Iranians submitted 34,343 asylum applications, the highest rate since 1986. Unlike the two previous waves, this wave was caused by Iran's economic crisis, deteriorating human rights record, diminishing opportunities, and the enduring tension between reformist and conservative factions.

While some manage to leave the country through illegal methods, such as being smuggled across the Turkish border, other asylees have adopted less common approaches such as claiming to be homosexual or converting to Christianity, fleeing Iran as a refugee, and then legitimizing an asylum application by explaining that homosexuality or conversion from Islam is considered an act of apostasy and punishable according to the Islamic Republic.

At the end of 2005, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated there were 111,684 refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced persons (IDPs) and other persons of concern from Iran. The countries hosting the largest populations of Iranian refugees were Germany (39,904), the United States (20,541), Iraq (9,500), the United Kingdom (8,044), the Netherlands (6,597), and Canada (6,508).

The distinctive characteristic of this wave is the rise of asylum applications lodged in Europe. In 2004, Iran ranked tenth among the top countries of origin for asylum seekers across Europe. Fifty-five percent of the total Iranian asylum applications in 2000 were submitted in Western European countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium, Austria, and the Netherlands.

In 2001 alone, there was a 300 percent increase in the number of Iranians seeking asylum in Britain. Furthermore, in 2004, Iran was the top nationality of asylum seekers to the UK, accounting for 10 percent of all applications. Preliminary observations indicate that these migrants often come from smaller provinces outside of Tehran and that they often face greater obstacles to integration in their host societies, especially in comparison to the relative successes of their more urban predecessors in those same countries.

Given that European Union countries have made it difficult to obtain asylum, Iranians who are not recognized as refugees often go to another country, remain illegally in the country where they applied, or return to Iran.

[edit] Statistics by country

Countrya Iranian-bornb Residents of Iranian ancestryc  United States 283,225 (2000)e[8] 338,266 (2000 US Census)de[9] to 1-1.5 million (2009)[10][11]  UAE  ? 400,000 (2008)d[12]  Canada 95,420 (2006) 121,505d(99,225 as single response and 22,280 among multiple responses)[13]  Qatar 73,000 (1993)[14]  Germany 65,750 (2000)[15]  Kuwait 60,000[citation needed]  Sweden 53,892 (2000)[16] 12,464 (2003)b[17]  Russia 50,000[citation needed]  Bahrain 48,000 (1998)[18]  Israel 47,800 (2007)[19] 135,000 (2007)d[20]  United Kingdom 42,494 (2000)[21][22]  Netherlands 21,469 (2000)[23]  Oman 25,000 (1993)[14]  Australia 18,798 (2001)d[24]  France 18,376 (2000)[25]  Turkey 7,831 (1990)[26]  Denmark 8,977 (1991)[27]  Philippines 7,144 (2000)[28]  Japan 7,000 (2000)[29]  Austria 5,926{ (2001)[30]  Italy 5,658 (2001)[31]  Switzerland 4,044 (2000)[32]  Norway 4,095 (2001)[33]  Spain 2,334 (2007)[34] Total:

Notes: Note a: The Iranian citizens abroad differ from the other Iranian peoples living in other areas of Greater Iran, who are of related ethnolinguistical family, speaking languages belonging to the Iranian languages, which is a branch of Indo-European languages. There are an estimated 150 to 200 million native speakers of Iranian languages (including 70 million in Iran as of 2006), the five major groups of Persians, Lurs, Pashtuns, Kurds and Baloch accounting for about 90% of this number.[35] Currently, most of these Iranian people live in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, parts of Uzbekistan (especially Samarkand and Bukhara), the Caucasus (Ossetia and Azerbaijan) and the Kurdish areas (referred to as Kurdistan) of Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. Smaller groups of Iranian people can also be found in western China, southern Pakistan and a few in western India. Due to recent migrations, there are also large communities of speakers of Iranian languages in Europe, the Americas, and Israel. Note b: In some countries naturalized citizens, dual citizens, or children with only one Iranian/foreign-born parent are counted (for statistical purposes) as citizens/nationals of the host country only (i.e. citizen of the country of residence). For example all naturalized Swiss citizens have a legal "Swiss origin" even though it is often not the same as their place of birth. Note c: Same as "Iranian-born" but includes their children born abroad. Note d: Iranian ancestry (i.e. second or third generation), not necessarily Iranian citizenship. Note e: In the period from 1961 to 2005, the United States has been the main destination of Iranian emigrants. A total of 378,995 Iranians have immigrated to the United States in that period, where the major concentrations of Iranian immigrants are California (158,613 Iran-born in 2000)[36], New York state (17,323)[37], Texas (15,581)[38], Virginia (10,889),[39] and Maryland (9,733)[40] Los Angeles Metropolitan Area was estimated to be host to approximately 114,712 Iranian immigrants[41], earning the Westwood area of LA the nickname Tehrangeles. In the case of the United States, the US Census Bureau's decennial census form does not offer a designation for individuals of Iranian descent. Consequently, it is estimated that only a fraction of the total number of Iranians are writing in their ancestry. The Census Bureau estimates that the Iranian-American community (including the US-born children of the Iranian foreign born) numbers around 330,000. However, studies using alternative statistical methods have estimated the actual number of Iranian Americans in the range of 691,000 to 1.2 million. [42][43]

[edit] See also

• Iranian American - one of the two largest Iranian communities outside of Iran
• Privatization in Iran
• Anti-Iranian sentiments
• Demography of Iran
• Iran's brain drain
• Foreign relations of Iran

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Country Profile - Iran Migration Policy Institute.
• Iranian Diaspora in pre-Islamic times
• Iranian Alliances Across Borders (IAAB) (non-profit, non-political, and non-religious)

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