Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Orang Timur Tengah Amerika" in Indonesian language version.
The U.S. Census Bureau defines Asian regions as: ... Western Asia includes Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Georgia, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.
This derives from a 1915 court ruling in Dow v. United States, in which a Syrian American, George Dow, appealed his being classified by the government as Asian. At the time, such a designation resulted in the denial of citizenship under the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.