I found this on Medium, Why Are Middle Easterners Classified as Caucasian? I can't vouch for its accuracy.
An excerpt:
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According to the United States Census Bureau, the official agency tasked with counting every person in the country, the definition of being white in America is “a person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.”
Middle Easterners and North Africans (also known as MENA) are therefore an invisible group here in America. Yes, we are somewhat represented through the American Community Survey, but since it’s not an actual count, disputes about the exact number of MENA people living in America ranges from 1.8 million to 3.7 million people.
If it seems a little counter-intuitive to be considered white, that’s because it is. During the first wave of immigration in the 19th century, Arab Christians trying to escape persecution in the Middle East, while also trying to avoid the racist restrictions of Asian immigration, won key court cases to change their racial classification from “Mongolian” to “Caucasian.”
In 1909, Levantine Christians pooled their resources in Los Angeles County to win the first case to classify Middle Easterners as Caucasian. In his statement, the lead defendant George Shishim argued: “If I am Mongolian, then so was Jesus, because we came from the same land.”
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