Members of the various communities comprising the Assyrian people in the United States have agreed to continue to be formally tabulated as one ethnic group in the U.S. Census for the year 2000.  The category will include numerous self-identifying appellations utilized by different Assyrians including, among others, Chaldean and Syriac.  Following a long and arduous research and consultation phase, the U.S. Census Bureau announced in April, 1999 that several different self-identifying names utilized by the Assyrian people will be tabulated under one group.  The main criterion used by the census bureau for the decision was self-identification of communities.  However, research revealed that despite the use of different names, the groups still warranted tabulation as one people.

The decision is considered significant in the mainstream Assyrian community primarily since it arose from within the community and secondarily was confirmed by U.S. governmental research.  It is believed that the decision will promote still greater cooperation amongst the communities in the U.S. and internationally.  It is noteworthy that this decision follows statements by various Assyrian patriarchs as well as the statement by the Assyrian American National Federation and the Chaldean Federation of America that their respective communities indeed comprise one people.

The decision is likely to have a direct impact in northern Iraq where the two main warring Kurdish groups, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) whose members are predominantly Sorani and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) whose members are predominantly Bahdani, had earlier announced a plan to commission a census of the portion of northern Iraq under their control.  The Kurds had hoped to count "Assyrians" and "Chaldeans" separately because of the differing terms of self-identification.  The Kurdish scheme aimed at fragmenting the Assyrian Christian communities of Iraq in order to minimize their demographic significance.   This crude Kurdish plan will now be difficult to fulfill as the main political broker of the Washington Agreement between the Kurds, the U.S. government, has formally acknowledged what members of the Assyrian communities had always maintained.

The consensus decision is also likely to have an impact in Baghdad.  Never has the government of Iraq recognized Assyrians as anything other than a religious minority.  Moreover, with Chaldeans belonging to a different Assyrian Christian sect, the communities were always considered distinct by the government.  With a consensus agreement by the communities, the government of Iraq will find still greater opposition to its policy of refusing to recognize the Assyrians and continuing to formalize and institutionalize artificial divisions of the Assyrian people into separate communities.  The Iraqi government will also find it impossible to continue to ignore what will now number as the third largest demographic group in Iraq.

It is ironic that the otherwise diametrically opposed Kurdish groups and the Iraqi government are in full agreement on denying recognition of the totality of the Assyrian people.  This historic pattern of persecution and denial of fundamental rights by both the central government and the ostensibly democratic Kurdish opposition of Iraq prompted U.S. Congressmen Rod Blagojevich and Ray LaHood to write to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in October, 1998, "Just last month, Congress voted to allocate U.S. resources to support opposition to Saddam Hussein’s regime.   But our support for an alternative to Hussein’s dictatorship is hollow if we do not insist that the opposition also uphold democratic values and respect the rights of all people.  We urge you to articulate, clearly and forcefully, to the Kurdish parties in Northern Iraq that continued U.S. support is dependent on their respect for the rights of all peoples in their area of influence."