المؤلف: دانييل غوتييه

Welcome to the twelfth installment of our series “100 Years of Welcome: Commemorating IINE’s Boston Centennial.” Throughout the series, we have taken a decade-by-decade look at the progressive, innovative, and adaptive ways that the International Institute of Boston (IIB) responded to the needs of newcomers over the last century. In this installment, we feature ten highlights that have defined our century-long legacy in Boston. 

1) Founding a Progressive Agency at the Peak of Immigration Restriction

The International Institute of Boston was founded in 1924 in part as a response to the backlash of fear and prejudice following the national immigration boom that helped to build up cities like Boston. The U.S. federal government enacted admissions quotas by country, denying many who were desperate to find safety and opportunity in the U.S. The goal of slashing admissions, banning immigrants from all of Asia, and instituting a racist “quota system,” was to admit only those viewed as the most culturally similar to the white Anglo-Saxon Christian U.S. majority at the time and to “preserve the ideal of U.S. homogeneity.” Any integration support received at the time was focused on total cultural assimilation.  

The International Institute model was revolutionary. Fiercely dedicated to “cultural pluralism,” IIB hired first– and second–generation immigrants as case workers and community organizers who encouraged newcomers to share and celebrate their cultural heritage while helping them access the support they needed to begin building their new lives and contributing to their new communities. 

2) Defending and Supporting Immigrants Through the Great Depression and Second World War

In the mid-30s and 40s after the collapse of the U.S. economy, poverty soared, fear and suspicion raged, and everywhere Americans looked they saw both real and imagined threats to the nation. IIB deftly navigated these roiling waters, finding ways to help as many newcomers in need as possible.  

IIB fought back against laws that would have deported many immigrants who were receiving federal assistance and put others in internment camps, and found ways to support second-generation American soldiers in Boston; U.S. allies fighting fascism abroad; Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis, and refugees from the Axis countries of Japan, Italy, and Germany, whom they defended with the rallying cry “Don’t condemn—understand!”  

Seizing the opportunity of a new wartime alliance with China, IIB pushed back against the discriminatory Chinese Exclusion Act and supported the city’s newly growing Chinese community. After the war, IIB helped Japanese Americans released from internment camps to resettle in Boston.  

3) Resettling Refugees From Around the World

Despite dramatic changes to federal immigration laws and humanitarian protections, IIB welcomed and supported new Bostonians fleeing persecution, violence, and disasters to find freedom, safety, and a better future for their العائلات. IIB and its supporters made Boston a haven for those escaping the world’s deadliest crises: refugees of the Second World War; repressive Communist dictatorships; the Cuban Revolution; the Hungarian Uprising; the Prague Spring; the Vietnam War; the Cambodian genocide; ethnic conflicts in Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo; from wars in the Balkans, the War on Terror, و the Syrian Civil War in the Middle East; and most recently, refugees fleeing the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the destabilization of Haiti. In each case, IIB learned about their individual needs and cultures and helped اللاجئون build community, integrate, and make our city what it is today.  

4) Helping Survivors Recover and Thrive

Throughout its history, the International Institute of Boston took initiative to provide special care to survivors of unspeakable harm, helping them to recover, stabilize and work toward a life of dignity and belonging in Boston. In the late 1940s and early 50s, IIB helped women who had been used for medical experiments and disfigured in Nazi concentration camps and refugees who had become disabled in the Second World War. In the 1990s, a Victims Assistance program was created for survivors of domestic violence, and in the early 2000s IIB created an International Survivors Center for victims of torture and war trauma. In the same year, IIB launched a program for immigrant survivors of human trafficking. Later in the 2000s, IIB welcomed former child soldiers from Sudan and launched its first program to help children who had been forced to flee their countries unaccompanied to reunite with family members in New England. 

5) Fostering Welcome Through Arts and Cultures

IIB has always encouraged immigrants to preserve their cultural heritage and their stories and to share them with their new neighbors to enrich the city of Boston. On any given night in Boston in the mid-1920s and 1930s, one would have had the chance to catch an IIB-sponsored play performed by a Greek youth group or a book discussion at the South End Greek Mother’s Club. A visitor to IIB’s offices might have encountered the Syrian Girls Club singing songs in Arabic, a Lithuanian art show, or a performance group practicing Ukrainian folk dance.  

Beginning in the 1940s and spanning 25 years, IIB sponsored and organized the New England Folk Festival. In the 1970s, IIB launched an annual Whole World Celebration, multiday festivals featuring international art, food, and performance at Commonwealth Armory and later Commonwealth Pier, which drew tens of thousands of participants. To help build empathy, understanding, and support, in the 2000s IIB created its immigration museum co-sponsored the Human Rights Watch film festival, and created Suitcase Stories®, a live storytelling series that has reached thousands of audience members with compelling personal stories of migration and the challenges and triumphs of integration.

6) Battling the Quota System

From its inception, IIB fought hard against racist federal immigration laws that limited admissions by country, treating people from many countries as inherently less desirable than others. IIB pushed for various groups to obtain visas above their quotas, led lobbying efforts, and testified before Congress. In 1961, a letter was sent by IIB to newly elected president, immigration advocate, and Brookline native John F. Kennedy calling for reforms that would abolish the quota system and prioritize family reunification and refugees as well as immigrants with skills that could benefit the economy. That same year, Kennedy signed a bill advancing each of these requests, and in 1965, his successor completely abolished the quota system with policies that echoed the requests in IIB’s letter.  

7) Building Boston’s Business Community 

For 100 years, IIB has helped immigrants to build Boston’s economy while securing family-sustaining jobs and fairness in the workplace. At the beginning of the 20th century, immigrants filled Boston’s factories, built its roads, railroad tracks, bridges, and subway tunnels, and unloaded shipments at Boston harbor. In the 1920s and 1930s, IIB helped teach workers English and mediate between them and their employers.  

In the 1940s, IIB helped immigrants fill the factory jobs that were fueling the war against fascism abroad and later advocated for the Massachusetts Fair Employment Act to protect them (and others) from hiring discrimination. In the 1980s, IIB volunteers began lending their cars and driving skills to help get clients to job interviews, and a Multiservice Center in Jamaica Plain established by IIB helped more than 200 Cuban refugees enter the workforce. In the 1990s, IIB launched a hospitality skills training program to help immigrants fill jobs in Boston hotels, and in the 2000s helped hundreds of Bhutanese refugees fill jobs at Logan International Airport, and introduced skills training programs in the construction and healthcare fields. 

8) Defending Against Discrimination

Throughout the last century, when world events inspired fear or mistrust of groups of newcomers, IIB helped to rally Boston in support. One of many challenging moments came in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, by Islamic fundamentalists. Two of the hijacked flights used in the attack had originated in Boston, and many of the city’s Muslims and Arabs became targets of violence, threats, and prejudice. IIB sprang into action to mobilize a local response, organizing a meeting of leaders from Boston’s Afghan community to issue a statement to the press, arranging a meeting between Boston’s Arab American leaders and the Hate Crime unit of the Boston Police Department, and developing a community resource guide for Boston’s Muslim community. IIB also partnered with the organization Muslim Community Support Services of Massachusetts to provide counseling to immigrants confronting trauma and feeling unsafe in their communities. 

9) Helping Immigrants Persevere Through the Pandemic

In the Spring of 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic forced sudden seismic shifts in community behavior and services of all kinds, immigration was halted, offices were shuttered, and immigrants already in Boston who faced language barriers, financial insecurity, and crowded living arrangements became the city’s most vulnerable residents.  

Fiercely dedicated to protecting clients, IINE adapted quickly. An Emergency Relief Fund was formed to provide direct monetary relief for clients most in need. IINE’s Boston food pantry went mobile as staff and volunteers delivered free groceries to families in Greater Boston each month. IINE learned to operate nearly all services remotely and delivered laptops to clients so that case management and even ESOL classes could move online.   

To protect people facing language barriers from the disease itself, IINE staff continuously translated the latest recommendations from the CDC into multiple languages, sent them directly to clients’ phones, and identified influencers like faith leaders and community organizers to reinforce messaging across immigrant communities.   

10) Meeting a New Level of Need

In the 2020s, unprecedented refugee crises erupted throughout the world, displacing more than 100 million people by violence, persecution, and natural disasters. This crisis reached New England when, in rapid succession, Afghans evacuated with little warning after the Taliban takeover; Ukrainians who lost their homes to Russian bombing fled; increasing numbers of children fleeing violence in Ecuador, Guatemala, and Honduras sought refuge in the U.S.; and tens of thousands of Haitians forced to leave a destabilized homeland responded to the U.S. offer of protection and came to join the large Haitian community here and build a better life in our region.  

To meet this moment, IINE mobilized community volunteer teams to help resettle refugees; grew its Unaccompanied Children’s program from one team to four to reach more than 1,000 children and families in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine, and the New York City area; and created a new Shelter Services team to help the thousands of people who had arrived legally but without housing support or work authorization to exit the Emergency Shelter system, find permanent homes, and join the Massachusetts workforce.  

Quickly rescaling to meet the need, IINE grew from a staff of 60 serving 4,000 refugees and immigrants in a year, to a staff of 250—including many speakers of Dari, Pashto, Ukrainian and Haitian Creole—that together served more than 20,000 newcomers in 2024. 

During our centennial year, we celebrate 100 years of life-changing support for refugees and immigrants in Greater Boston and prepare for our second century of service. Learn more here: IINE Boston Centennial.

Welcome to the eleventh installment of our series “100 Years of Welcome: Commemorating IINE’s Boston Centennial.” The previous installment, “2005–2014: Bringing Families Together,” described how the International Institute of Boston (IIB) resettled refugee families from Iraq and Bhutan, helped “strangers become families” when refugee men who had immigrated alone were asked to share housing, launched a family reunification program for children who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border unaccompanied, and formed a new “family of agencies” by officially uniting with chapters in Lowell and Manchester to become the International Institute of New England.

In 2015, Jeffrey Thielman became President and CEO of the newly unified International Institute of New England (IINE), comprised of a central administration in Boston and three service teams in the gateway cities of Boston and Lowell, Massachusetts, and Manchester, New Hampshire. The following year, IINE’s Central and Boston teams moved to their current home at the Chinatown Trade Building at 2 Boylston Street, on the edge of Boston’s historic Chinatown neighborhood, where it had been serving immigrants since the 1940s. The first full decade of the International Institute of New England would be marked by dramatic change, adaptation, and resilience. 

Resettlement Rebounds

During his second term, President Barack Obama moved away from some of the restrictive immigration policies put in place at the launch of the War on Terror in 2001 by steadily increasing the number of refugees that could be admitted to the U.S., from 70,000 in 2015, to 85,000 in 2016, and then to 110,000 in 2017—the highest ceiling since 1995.

This higher ceiling allowed IINE to continue to resettle large numbers of Bhutanese and Iraqi refugees in Greater Boston, while also welcoming hundreds of refugees from the conflict-riven Democratic Republic of the Congo, from Syria at the height of its civil war, and from other conflict zones throughout the world. Building on decades of experience, IINE’s Boston office helped refugees find housing, connect to public support, learn English and job skills, and enter the workforce.  

Strengthening Community Partnerships

Resettle Together

As arrivals increased, IINE looked to new community partners to help welcome and support اللاجئون. In 2016, IINE piloted the Resettle Together community sponsorship program, creating a model for deeper collaboration with regional faith, education, and community groups on core refugee resettlement activities. These included securing apartments and furnishing them through donations, meeting new arrivals at the airport and driving them to their new homes, and helping them navigate their new communities, from teaching them about the public transit system, to taking them grocery shopping, to helping them with medical appointments. IINE would launch a more fully developed Resettle Together program in 2021, providing increased structure and mutual support to the partnership between case workers and neighborhood groups that has always been at the heart of refugee resettlement.

مخزن الطعام

Another Boston partnership that gained importance was with the Greater Boston Food Bank, as IINE expanded its onsite food pantry for Boston area clients. Groceries picked up from the Food Bank each month were made available right at IINE’s Boston office to ensure that clients who were not yet eligible to work would have access to free nutritious food year-round. Community volunteers were recruited to help with distribution, and the pantry would come to serve as many as 1,300 clients in a single year. 

Suitcase Stories® 

To further engage communities in welcoming newcomers, IINE turned back to the arts, continuing a tradition that began with its international folk festivals in the 1930s and 40s and was carried on with the Human Rights Watch Film Festival and Dreams of Freedom Museum in the early 2000s. Launched in 2017, the قصص الحقيبة® program produces live performance events in which storytellers share their immigration stories, including personal tales of migration, integration, adaptation, and resilience; stories handed down from immigrant family members, and stories of the transformation and growth that comes from working with newcomers.   

In its first years, more than 2,000 audience members attended Suitcase Stories® events in venues throughout Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and thousands more were reached through broadcasts on public television. Feeling deep empathy and connection with the storytellers and their subjects, many viewers were inspired to become directly involved with IINE at what would prove to be a crucial moment.  

The Return of Restriction

When President Donald J. Trump took office in 2017, his administration swiftly enacted immigration restrictions the likes of which had not been seen since IIB’s founding in the 1920s. The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program was an early target. The Trump Administration immediately suspended the entire program for 120 days and then instituted a ban on refugee admissions from several predominately Muslim countries, including Iraq and Syria. A new policy of “extreme vetting” for refugees led to longer processing times and backlogged applications, and the refugee admissions ceiling plunged from 110,000 in 2017 to 15,000 by 2021.  

IINE had to adjust quickly. While continuing to serve the refugees in its care, focus shifted from welcoming new arrivals to more deeply supporting newly arrived individuals and families to build toward self-sufficiency through English language classes, skills training, and employment support. IINE’s dormant legal services program was revived with the introduction of a Legal Immigration Forms Service to aid with citizenship applications, family reunification, work authorization, and other crucial immigration applications. With federal support severely diminishing and inhumane new policies being enacted—most notably children being forcibly separated from their families at the U.S. border and held in detention facilities—IINE turned to individual donors to keep critical services going, raising millions of dollars to fill in funding gaps and continue helping families move forward.     

Coping with Covid

A new threat emerged in the Spring of 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic forced sudden seismic shifts in services of all kinds throughout the world. All U.S. immigration was further curtailed due to health risks—regardless of how dire the needs of those seeking refuge—and refugees and immigrants already in Greater Boston were among the most hard-hit residents. Already lacking financial resources to fall back on, many newcomers who had found jobs quickly lost them as workplaces shut down. Living in small, shared apartments compounded their health risks, and language barriers and social isolation made it difficult to access timely public health information.  

Fiercely dedicated to protecting clients, IINE adapted quickly. An Emergency Relief Fund was formed to raise direct monetary relief for clients most in need. IINE’s Boston food pantry went mobile as staff and volunteers delivered free groceries to families each month. IINE learned to operate nearly all services remotely and delivered laptops to clients so that case management and even ESOL classes could move online.  

To protect people facing language barriers from the disease itself, IINE staff continuously translated the latest recommendations from the CDC into multiple languages, sent them directly to clients’ phones and identified influencers like faith leaders and community organizers to reinforce messaging across immigrant communities.  

Rapid Rescaling

By the end of 2021, the Covid-19 pandemic had waned enough that Boston was reopening. IINE services moved from remote to hybrid, offering more flexibility than ever before. As the new presidential administration of Joseph R. Biden began reversing immigration restrictions, ending the “Muslim Ban,” and raising the ceiling on refugee admissions, IINE was able to pivot back to helping newly arriving persecuted and threatened populations from throughout the world to make Boston their new home.  

The need to ramp up services was swift and dramatic. In August, as the U.S. withdrew its troops from Afghanistan, the repressive Taliban regime quickly regained control, necessitating “Operation Allies Refuge” through which the U.S. airlifted 124,000 Afghans out of the country. Seventy-six thousand Individuals and families who had aided U.S.-led military operations and were now prime targets of persecution and retribution, resettled in the U.S.  

With little warning, IINE began an effort to resettle more than 500 Afghan evacuees in Boston, Lowell, and Manchester within four months and launched another emergency assistance fund to rally community and volunteer support. Among a wave of new hires, IINE brought on many case workers who were themselves former Afghan refugees, as well as Dari and Pashto-speaking translators, to serve arriving Afghan families.  

Next, in the winter of 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, relentlessly pummeling civilian neighborhoods with bombs and flooding the streets with tanks and troops. Ukrainians who had been living safe and comfortable lives suddenly found their families in the crosshairs. By Spring, 20,000 Ukrainians had connected with resettlement sponsors through the Unite for Ukraine, or “U4U,” program. While hosts welcomed Ukrainian families in their homes and helped them integrate into their new communities, IINE helped new arrivals with complicated application processes from getting work authorization to navigating immigration laws. Ukrainian case specialists joined IINE to help displaced families.  

By 2023, parallel wide-spread conflicts had created a worldwide refugee crisis of historic proportions. In the U.S., the Biden administration relaxed Covid-era border restrictions and designated those fleeing several destabilized nations for Temporary Protective Status and Humanitarian Parole. Included was Haiti, which had suffered a deadly combination of natural disasters and political upheaval and was now overrun by armed gangs. Thousands of Haitians embarked on long and dangerous journeys across multiple countries to reach Boston, home to the third largest Haitian diaspora in the world. Lacking the benefits and protections afforded to those officially designated as refugees, many Haitian immigrants found themselves living in state-run emergency shelters. 

IINE hired scores of new staff members to support Haitian arrivals, many of them Haitian, and held all-day “clinics” in its offices, and in libraries and churches, to help newly arrived families access cash assistance and immigration legal support. Public events like official city Flag Raisings on Haitian Independence Day helped rally community members to support their new neighbors. A new IINE department of Shelter Services was assembled to help clients exit state-run emergency shelters quickly, safely, and permanently. 

Between 2021 and 2024, in the wake of restrictive national policies and a deadly pandemic, the International Institute of New England grew from 60 staff members serving 4,000 refugees and immigrants, to a staff of 250 serving more than 20,000 newcomers. IINE’s unprecedented responsiveness was a culmination of 100 years of adaptation and innovation, driven by compassion.  

Today, 28% of Boston residents are immigrants, and many more are children of immigrants. New arrivals make up close to 30% of the city’s workforce, filling critical roles in a wide variety of industries ranging from service to healthcare to construction. Thousands who have fled persecution, war, famine, and climate disasters, often arriving with little more than the clothes on their backs, are drawn by family, Boston’s international community, and the reputation the city has earned through its commitment to welcoming immigrants. The longstanding Mayor’s Office of New Bostonians—now the Mayor’s Office for Immigrant Advancement—uplifts the critical work of welcoming and supporting newcomers, and the city itself is led by Mayor Michelle Wu, the daughter of immigrants from Taiwan.  

The International Institute remains a leader in the field of refugee resettlement and immigration services in the responsive and innovative programming it creates, the breadth of services it provides, the number of refugees and immigrants it serves (more individuals and families than all other agencies combined), and by spearheading advocacy initiatives in partnership with fellow immigrant services providers. With the support of Bostonians, IINE will continue to welcome refugees and immigrants to Boston for the next 100 years, and beyond. 

During our centennial year, we celebrate 100 years of life-changing support for refugees and immigrants in Greater Boston and prepare for our second century of service. Learn more here: IINE Boston Centennial.