If you were to map the Kurdish American population, the biggest dot would land on Nashville, Tennessee — the city with the largest and most established Kurdish community in the country. From there, significant clusters appear in Dallas-Fort Worth, San Diego, Houston, Washington D.C. and its Virginia suburbs, Detroit, Chicago, and Atlanta. Smaller communities exist in dozens of other cities, from Portland to Phoenix to New York.

The distribution reflects the history of Kurdish migration to the United States. Early arrivals in the 1970s and 1980s often settled wherever they found work or family connections, and secondary migration — the pattern of refugees moving from their initial resettlement city to join community members elsewhere — concentrated populations over time. Nashville’s position as the country’s largest Kurdish city is partly a product of this clustering dynamic.

The geographic spread has implications for organizations like KASA. A community distributed across 30 states cannot be served by a single physical location. Online programs, virtual events, and digital communication are not just conveniences — they are the only way to serve the diaspora as a whole.