The demise of the Ottoman Empire left a power vacuum that not only led to constant struggles over the fate of a variety of ethnic and religious groups in the Middle East but also urged Ottoman immigrants in the United States to face the challenges of what roles they might play in reshaping a world which they had left and which was in the midst of profound political and geographical change. Consequently, thousands of Ottoman citizens including Arabs, Turks, Kurds, Armenians, Greeks, and Sephardic Jews who had made their way to the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, constructed new identities based on ethnicity, religion, territorial dispersion, an imagined place of origin, a collective heritage, genealogical continuity, and a sense of extraterritoriality and loss. Decades later, the second wave of Middle Eastern migrants to the U.S., who came from post-Ottoman lands, drastically changed, redefined and reconstructed the identities of the first wave and their American-born offspring, often reinvigorating ethnic attachment and solidarity. The transnationalization of immigrant and/or ethnic identities, as well as transnational/transborder activities are relatively recent additions to the research agenda in immigration and diaspora studies. However, the transborder connections and activities of various Middle Eastern immigrant communities in the United States have not yet been studied extensively in a historical perspective. This paper will examine the transnationalization of ethnic identities, and politics among Middle Eastern immigrants in the United States, particularly Arabs, Kurds, and Turks from the late Ottoman and post-Ottoman lands. It will seek to address the following questions: What were the roles of the Middle Eastern immigrants in nation-making, state-building and post-war reconstruction of the homeland? What are the roles of home governments, political elites, immigrant organizations, community leaders and religious figures in the formation of diasporic consciousness? What is the relation between religion and ethnic or national mobilization? Why and under what circumstances did each Middle Eastern community prioritize one identity over another? How did nationalistic/political movements, ethnic conflicts, changing political boundaries, and power shifts in the late Ottoman and post-Ottoman lands impact diasporic identity in the United States? In sum, this paper will provide an overview of early Middle Eastern migrants to the U.S. and explore their transnational ties to the homeland.