Jordan Emigration and Immigration

Online Records

 * 1890-1960 Passenger Lists Leaving UK 1890-1960 at Findmypast; index & images ($); includes those with Destination of Jordan
 * 1946-1971 All Free Access: Africa, Asia and Europe, Passenger Lists of Displaced Persons, 1946-1971 at Ancestry, index and images. ($)


 * British Armed Forces and Overseas Births and Baptisms, Jordan, index & images ($)


 * British Armed Forces and Overseas Banns and Marriages, Jordan, index & images ($)


 * British Armed Forces and Overseas Deaths and Burials at Findmypast - index & images ($)

Finding the Town of Origin in Jordan
If you are using emigration/immigration records to find the name of your ancestors' town in Jordan, see Jordan Finding Town of Origin for additional research strategies.

Jordan Emigration and Immigration
"Emigration" means moving out of a country. "Immigration" means moving into a country. Emigration and immigration sources list the names of people leaving (emigrating) or arriving (immigrating) in the country. These sources may be passenger lists, permissions to emigrate, or records of passports issued. The information in these records may include the emigrants’ names, ages, occupations, destinations, and places of origin or birthplaces. Sometimes they also show family groups.

Immigration into Jordan

 * From as early as 1948, Jordan has accepted refugees from multiple neighboring countries in conflict. An estimated 2.1 million Palestinian and 1.4 million Syrian refugees are present in Jordan as of a 2015 census. The kingdom is also a refuge to thousands of Iraqi Christians fleeing persecution by ISIL.
 * About 31,163 Yemenis and 22,700 Libyan refugees live in Jordan as of January 2015. There are thousands of Lebanese refugees who came to Jordan when civil strife and war and the 2006 war broke out in their native country. Up to 1 million Iraqis came to Jordan following the Iraq War in 2003. In 2015, their number was 130,911. About 2,500 Iraqi Mandaean refugees have been resettled in Jordan.
 * There are an estimated 3,000 Armenians living in the country today. There were about 6,000 Armenians living in Jordan during the period 1930-1946. After the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, a new wave of immigrants came from Palestine to Jordan increasing the number of Armenians to about 10,000. However starting in the 1950s, and particularly after the 1967 Arab-Israeli Six-Day War, Jordan witnessed the emigration of many Armenians to Australia, Canada and the United States a trend that continued in the 1970s, reducing the numbers of Jordanian Armenians to about 3,000.

Further Details on Immigrants and Refugees

 * Jordan was home to 2,175,491 Palestinian refugees as of December 2016; most of them, but not all, had been granted Jordanian citizenship. The first wave of Palestinian refugees arrived during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War and peaked in the 1967 Six-Day War and the 1990 Gulf War. In the past, Jordan had given many Palestinian refugees citizenship, however recently Jordanian citizenship is given only in rare cases. 370,000 of these Palestinians live in UNRWA refugee camps. Following the capture of the West Bank by Israel in 1967, Jordan revoked the citizenship of thousands of Palestinians to thwart any attempt to permanently resettle from the West Bank to Jordan. West Bank Palestinians with family in Jordan or Jordanian citizenship were issued yellow cards guaranteeing them all the rights of Jordanian citizenship if requested.
 * Up to 1,000,000 Iraqis moved to Jordan following the Iraq War in 2003, and most of them have returned. In 2015, their number in Jordan was 130,911. Many Iraqi Christians (Assyrians/Chaldeans) however settled temporarily or permanently in Jordan.
 * Immigrants also include 15,000 Lebanese who arrived following the 2006 Lebanon War.
 * Since 2010, over 1.4 million Syrian refugees have fled to Jordan to escape the violence in Syria, the largest population being in the Zaatari refugee camp. The Zaatari refugee camp contains a population of 80,000 Syrian refugees, the largest Syrian refugee camp in the world.
 * In 2007, there were up to 150,000 Assyrian Christians; most are Eastern Aramaic speaking refugees from Iraq.
 * Kurds number some 30,000, and like the Assyrians, many are refugees from Iraq, Iran and Türkiye.
 * Descendants of Armenians that sought refuge in the Levant during the 1915 Armenian genocide number approximately 5,000 persons, mainly residing in Amman.
 * A small number of ethnic Mandeans also reside in Jordan, again mainly refugees from Iraq.
 * Around 12,000 Iraqi Christians have sought refuge in Jordan after the Islamic State took the city of Mosul in 2014.
 * Several thousand Libyans, Yemenis and Sudanese have also sought asylum in Jordan to escape instability and violence in their respective countries.
 * The 2015 Jordanian census recorded that there were 1,265,000 Syrians, 636,270 Egyptians, 634,182 Palestinians, 130,911 Iraqis, 31,163 Yemenis, 22,700 Libyans and 197,385 from other nationalities residing in the country.
 * There are around 1.2 million illegal, and 500,000 legal, migrant workers in the kingdom.[ Thousands of foreign women, mostly from the Middle East and Eastern Europe, work in nightclubs, hotels and bars across the kingdom.[
 * American and European expatriate communities are concentrated in the capital, as the city is home to many international organizations and diplomatic missions.

United Arab Emirates

 * There are thousands of Jordanians living in the United Arab Emirates. As of 2009, their population was estimated at 250,000, an increase from 80,000 in 2003, making them one of the largest Jordanian diaspora communities both worldwide and in the Persian Gulf region and also form the second largest community of non-citizen Arabs in the UAE after the Egyptians. Most Jordanians live in Dubai and the capital, Abu Dhabi.

United States

 * The history of the Jordanian immigration to the United States is relatively recent. The first identifiable wave of immigration from Jordan to the United States occurred after the Second World War (1945).
 * Those first Jordanians settled in Chicago, (especially in the Near West and Southwest Sides sections), New York City, and the Southwest and West Coast states (i.e. California).
 * Over 5,000 Jordanians arrived to the United States in the 1950's. In the mid 1960s, due to U.S. immigration laws and the Six-Day War of 1967 in Jordan, the number of Jordanians who emigrated to the United States exceeded 11,000 people. At this time, the majority chose to settle in Western cities and in the southwest of the country, except the wealthy Jordanians who felt more comfortable in the suburbs of large cities.
 * Then in the 1970s, a civil war broke out in Jordan, causing 27,535 Jordanians emigrate to the United States.
 * In the 1980s, annually emigrated around 2,500 Jordanian to the USA. By then, the Jordanian community in the United States had grown at a rapid pace, and it already represented a large population. A substantial number of Jordanians who settled in the United States at this time were war refugees. The total number of Jordanian immigrants from 1820 to 1984 was 56,720.
 * Currently, the New York City Metropolitan Area, notably including Paterson, New Jersey, attracts the highest number of legal Jordanian immigrants admitted to the United States. The Little Ramallah community of South Paterson in New Jersey is home to a rapidly growing Jordanian immigrant population. Yonkers, New York has a sizeable Jordanian population. The Jordanian American community in Washington, DC held a candlelight vigil after the death of King Hussein. Chicago also maintains, even today, a large Jordanian population.

Records of Jordanian Emigrants in Their Destination Nations

 * United States Emigration and Immigration
 * Canada Emigration and Immigration
 * United Arab Emirates Emigration and Immigration
 * Australia Emigration and Immigration
 * Pakistan Emigration and Immigration