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Iranian Americans are citizens or nationals of the United States who are of Iranian ancestry. Most Iranian Americans arrived in the United States after 1979, as a result of the Iranian Revolution and the fall of the Persian monarchy, with over 40% settling in California, specifically Los Angeles. Unable to return to Iran, they have created many distinct ethnic enclaves, such as the Los Angeles Tehrangeles community in Westwood, Los Angeles. Based on a 2012 announcement by the National Organization for Civil Registration, an organization of the Ministry of Interior of Iran, the United States has the greatest number of Iranians outside the country. Iranian Americans are among the most highly educated people in the United States. They have historically excelled in business, academia, science, the arts, and entertainment. Many have become doctors, engineers, lawyers, and tech entrepreneurs. Research by the Iranian Studies Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2004 estimated the number of Iranian Americans at 691,000, about half of which live in the US state of California. Terminology "Iranian-American" is sometimes used interchangeably with "Persian-American", partly due to the fact that, in the Western world, Iran was known as "Persia". On the Nowruz of 1935, Reza Shah Pahlavi asked foreign delegates to use the term Iran, the endonym of the country used since the Sasanian Empire, in formal correspondence. Since then the use of the word "Iran" has become more common in Western countries. This also changed the usage of the terms for Iranian nationality, and the common adjective for citizens of Iran changed from "Persian" to "Iranian." In 1959, the government of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Reza Shah Pahlavi's son, announced that both "Persia" and "Iran" could officially be used interchangeably. The issue is still debated today. There is a tendency among Iranian-Americans to categorize themselves as "Persian" rather than "Iranian", mainly to dissociate themselves from the negative stereotypes of Iranians in media. Some Iranian-Americans also don't prefer "Iranian" to disassociate themselves with the Islamic Republic of Iran, yet this rationale has been criticized as the term "Iran" was widely used before 1979 as well. The term "Iranian" is regarded as more inclusive than "Persian", as the term "Persian" excludes non-Persian ethnic minorities of Iran. While the majority of Iranian-Americans come from Persian backgrounds, there is a significant number of non-Persian Iranians such as Azeris and Kurds within the Iranian-American community, leading some scholars to believe that the label "Iranian" is more inclusive, since the label "Persian" excludes non-Persian minorities. History Early history One of the first recorded Iranians to visit North America was Martin the Armenian, an Iranian-Armenian tobacco grower who settled in Jamestown, Virginia in 1618. Mirza Mohammad Ali, also known as Hajj Sayyah, was an Iranian who came to North America in the 1800s. He was inspired to travel around the world due to the contradiction between the democratic ideals he read about and how his fellow Iranians were treated by their leaders. He began his travels as a 23-year-old looking for knowledge, to experience the lives of others, and to use that knowledge to help with Iran's progress. His stay in the United States lasted 10 years, and he traveled across the country from New York to San Francisco. He met a variety of influential American figures including President Ulysses S. Grant, who met with him on several occasions. On 26 May 1875, Hajj Sayyah became the first Iranian to become an American citizen. He was imprisoned upon his return to Iran for taking a stand against living conditions there. He looked to the United States to protect him but to no avail. During the peak period of worldwide emigration to the United States (1842–1903), only 130 Iranian nationals were known to have immigrated. First phase of emigration The first wave of Iranian migration to the United States occurred from the late 1940s to 1977, or 1979. The United States was an attractive destination for students, as American universities offered some of the best programs in engineering and other fields, and were eager to attract students from foreign countries. Iranian students, most of whom had learned English as a second language in Iran, were highly desirable as new students at colleges and universities in the United States. By the mid-1970s, nearly half of all Iranian students who studied abroad did so in the United States. By 1975, the Institute of International Education's annual foreign student census figures listed Iranian students as the largest group of foreign students in the United States, amounting to a total of 9% of all foreign students in the country. As the Iranian economy continued to rise steadily in the 70s, it enabled many more Iranians to travel abroad freely. Consequently, the number of Iranian visitors to the United States also increased considerably, from 35,088, in 1975, to 98,018, in 1977. During the 1977–78 academic year, of about 100,000 Iranian students abroad, 36,220 were enrolled in American institutions of higher learning. During the 1978–79 academic year, on the eve of the revolution, the number of Iranian students enrolled in American institutions rose to 45,340, and in 1979–80, that number reached a peak of 51,310. At that time, according to the Institute of International Education, more students from Iran were enrolled in American universities than from any other foreign country. The pattern of Iranian migration during this phase usually only involved individuals, not whole families. Due to Iran's increasing demand for educated workers in the years before the revolution, the majority of the Iranian students in America intended to return home after graduation to work, especially those who had received financial aid from the Iranian government or from industry on condition of returning to take jobs upon graduation. Due to the drastic events of the 1979 Revolution, the students ended up staying in the United States as refugees. These several thousand visitors and students unintentionally became the basis of the cultural, economic, and social networks that would enable large-scale immigration in the years that followed. Second phase The second phase of Iranian migration began immediately before and after the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the overthrow of the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and became significant in the early 1980s. As Ronald H. Bayor writes, "The 1979 Revolution and the 1980–88 war with Iraq transformed Iran's class structure, politically, socially, and economically." The revolution drastically changed the pattern and nature of Iranian emigration to the United States, while the Iran-Iraq War that ensued afterwards was also another factor that forced many of the best-educated and most wealthy families into exile in the United States and other countries. Once .... Discover the Lisa Kumar popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Lisa Kumar books.