190 Converting Resources to the Cause The sufficiency of Syrians’ resources is not surprising given their relatively high degree of wealth and educational attainment in comparison to other immigrant groups. Syrians’ socioeconomic and educational mobility have been high in the United States due in part to the fact that their origins were middle-class to begin with, as well as the fact that many came abroad specifically to obtain advanced degrees and white-collar work. Of course, not all Syrian activists were wealthy. However, their community-level wealth was initially sufficient to fund the pro-Arab Spring effort in different ways. In the United States, for instance, the median annual wage for Syrian immigrants was reported as $52,000 in 2014, compared to the $36,000 median wage for all immigrants and $45,000 for US-born workers (Dyssegaard Kallick et al. 2016). In the same year, 27 percent of Syrian immigrant men held an advanced degree of some sort; 11 percent were business owners compared to 4 percent of immigrants and 3 percent of US-born persons; Syrian business owners additionally earned an average of $72,000 per year (Dyssegaard Kallick et al. 2016). Researchers also report that Syrian immigrants have relatively elevated levels of English-language abilities, home ownership, and naturalization compared to all immigrants and the US-born (Dyssegaard Kallick et al. 2016). Correspondingly, Syrian activists reported converting their social capital to the anti-regime effort. As mentioned in Chapter 5, engineers like Khaled worked to lend their expertise and skills by partnering with Syrians at home to rebuild infrastructure destroyed by the regime and its backers. Lobbyists like Mouaz Moustafa, with years of experience working as a congressional aide in Washington, DC, and then as a member of the Libyan Emergency Task Force, went on to form the formidable Syrian Emergency Task Force to lobby for sanctions against the regime. Law students like Y. lent her legal expertise to the cause, arguing that the Responsibility to Protect doctrine should be applied in the Syrian case, and not just the Libyan one. Youth activists like Razan and Alaa, mentioned in Chapter 4, used their tech savviness to communicate with activists on the ground to coordinate and publicize protests. Doctors like Fadel and Ayman lent their labor by working with groups like the Syrian American and Syrian British medical societies to perform life-saving surgeries inside liberated zones and refugee camps. Syrian Americans like Hussam, with years of experience as a civil rights activist for Arab and Muslim minorities, transferred his organizing and fundraising expertise to the Syrian American Council. I watched in awe firsthand as he helped to raise tens of thousands of dollars for the Syrian American Council in community meetings held in hotel ballrooms in Anaheim, California. In all, a well-educated and highly professionalized activist community offered an immense degree of intangible support to the revolution and relief efforts. However, as the need for aid increased over time with Syria’s growing humanitarian emergency, these organizers’ main donor base in the https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272148 Published online by Cambridge University Press