Christian emigration

The phenomenon of large-scale migration of Christians is the main reason why Christians' share of the population has been declining in many countries. Many Muslim countries have witnessed disproportionately high emigration rates among their Christian minorities for several generations. Today, most Middle Eastern people in the United States are Christians, and the majority of Arabs living outside the Arab World are Arab Christians.

Push factors motivating Christians to emigrate include religious discrimination, persecution, and cleansing. Pull factors include prospects of upward mobility as well as joining relatives abroad.

Christian emigration from the Middle East

The majority of Arabs living outside the Arab World are Arab Christians. Christians have emigrated from the Middle East, a phenomenon that has been attributed to various causes included economic factors, political and military conflict, and feelings of insecurity or isolation among minority Christian populations. The higher rate of emigration among Christians, compared to other religious groups, has also been attributed to their having stronger support networks available abroad, in the form of existing emigrant communities.

Egypt

As with most diaspora Arabs, a substantial proportion of the Egyptian diaspora consists of Arab Christians. The Copts have been emigrating from Egypt both to improve their economic situation and to escape systematic harassment and persecution in their homeland.

Iran

Christians and other religious minorities make up a disproportionately high share of the Persian diaspora.

Iraq

Following the Iraq War, the Christian population of Iraq has collapsed. Of the nearly 1 million Assyro-Chaldean Christians, most have emigrated to the United States, Canada, Australia and within some of the 28 member states of the European Union and most of the rest concentrated within the northern Kurdish enclave of Iraqi Kurdistan. With continuing insurgency, Iraqi Christians are under constant threat or radical Islamic violence.

Since the United States-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the resulting breakdown of law and order in that country, many Syriac speaking Assyrians and other Christians have fled the country, taking refuge in Syria, Jordan and further afield. Despite Assyrians making up only 3% of Iraq's population, on October 2005, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reported of the 700,000 Iraqis who took refuge in Syria between October 2003 and March 2005, 36% were "Iraqi Christians."

Lebanon

Lebanon has experienced a large migration of Lebanese Christians for many generations. There are more Lebanese people living outside of Lebanon (8.6^[1]-14^[2] million), than within (4.3 million). The majority of the diaspora population consists of Lebanese Christians; however, there are some who are Muslim, Druze, or Jewish. They trace their origin to several waves of Christian emigration, starting with the exodus that followed the 1860 Lebanon conflict in Ottoman Syria.

Under the current Lebanese nationality law, diaspora Lebanese do not have an automatic right of return to Lebanon. Due to varying degrees of assimilation and high degree of interethnic marriages, most diaspora Lebanese have not passed on the Arabic language to their children, while still maintaining a Lebanese ethnic identity.

The Lebanese Civil War has further fed the higher Christian emigration rate. Higher Muslim birthrates, the presence of Palestinians in Lebanon and Syrian migrant workers have contributed to reducing the Christian proportion of the Lebanese population. Lebanese Christians still remain culturally and politically prominent, forming 35-40% of the population. Since the end of the Lebanese Civil War, Muslim emigrants have outnumbered Christians, but the latter remain somewhat over-represented compared to their proportion of the population.^[3]

West Bank

In the Palestinian Authority, there has been considerable emigration and Christians are disproportionately represented. Most of Gazan Christians have fled the Gaza Strip following the Hamas takeover in 2007, largely relocating to the West Bank.

Syria

There are almost as many Syrian people living outside of Syria (15^[4] million), as within (18 million). The majority of the diaspora population consists of Syrian Christians. They trace their origin to several waves of Christian emigration, starting with the exodus from the time of the Ottoman Syria.

Under the current nationality law, diaspora Syrians do not have an automatic right of return to Syria. Due to varying degrees of assimilation and high degree of interethnic marriages, most diaspora Syrians have not passed on the Arabic language to their children, while still maintaining a Syrian ethnic identity.

Following the eruption of Syrian civil war in 2011, Christians have been targeted by militant Islamists, and hence have become a major component of the Syrian refugees.

In FY 2016, when the US dramatically increased the number of refugees admitted from Syria, the US let in 12,587 refugees from the country, with 99% being Muslims (with few Shia Muslims admitted). Less than 1% where Christian and according to the Pew Research Center analysis of State Department Refugee Processing Center data.^[5] The religious breakdown of Syria's 17.2 million people is approximately 74% Sunni Islam, 13% Alawi, Ismaili and Shia Islam, 10% Christian and 3% Druze.^[6]

Turkey

Originally, most emigrants from what is now Turkey were Christian subjects of the Ottoman Empire, including Greek refugees. Today, emigration from Turkey consists primarily of Muslims.

The percentage of Christians in Turkey fell from 19 percent in 1914 to 2.5 percent in 1927,^[7] due to events which had a significant impact on the country's demographic structure, such as the Armenian Genocide, the population exchange between Greece and Turkey,^[8] and the emigration of Christians (such as Levantines, Greeks, Armenians etc.) to foreign countries (mostly in Europe and the Americas) that actually began in the late 19th century and gained pace in the first quarter of the 20th century, especially during World War I and after the Turkish War of Independence.^[9] Today there are more than 160,000 people of different Christian denominations, representing less than 0.2 percent of Turkey's population,^[10]