Tag: Client story

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 families. 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, and 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 refugees 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 refugees. 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.

Food Pantry

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 Suitcase Stories® 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.

Welcome to the tenth installment of our series “100 Years of Welcome: Commemorating IINE’s Boston Centennial.” The previous installment, “1995–2004: Dreams of Freedom,” described how the International Institute of Boston educated the public by opening the Dreams of Freedom immigration museum; helped newcomers build savings, buy homes, get jobs, and recover from traumas with a host of new programs; resettled refugees fleeing conflicts in the Balkans and Sudan; and was an outspoken supporter of Arab and Muslim communities at the beginning of the War on Terror.

In 2005, Carolyn Benedict-Drew, who had previously served as Chief of Policy for Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline, became the President and CEO of the International Institute of Boston (IIB) – its tenth leader. In her first year, she established the International Women’s Day (IWD) Luncheon to build support for women and girl refugees and immigrants, highlight their unique needs, and celebrate their successes. Throughout her tenure, she oversaw a variety of resettlement challenges and innovations.  

Resettling Families from Iraq and Bhutan

As the U.S.-led war in Iraq raged on, the deeply divided country began to tear apart, creating a massive displacement crisis. Millions of Iraqis were forced to flee their homes due to mass bombing campaigns, street-level military skirmishes, and sectarian violence. Particularly vulnerable were the nation’s many different religious, ethnic, and political minority groups.   

Resettling hundreds of Iraqis with varying backgrounds and needs became a major focus for IIB. The first arrivals came with Special Immigrant Visas, granted for serving the U.S. government in roles such as interpreters, engineers, or security personnel, which made them targets of the Iraqi government. Other threatened and persecuted groups followed in waves as they secured refugee status. IIB helped many Iraqis resettle in the nearby cities of Chelsea and Quincy, where one family went on to found Falafel King, a restaurant chain that now boasts two locations in downtown Boston.  

During the height of Iraqi resettlement in 2008, IIB also began to welcome hundreds of refugees from Bhutan. They were largely Nepali-speaking Lhotshampas (Southerners) who had been exiled in the early 90s when conflicts flared over the government’s promotion of a single national identity. Many spent the intervening decade living in refugee camps in Nepal where they faced dangerous health conditions, but thanks to NGOs, often learned English. IIB helped many Bhutanese resettle in Lynn, and Chelsea, and IIB Employment Specialists helped many find service jobs at Logan International Airport. Each morning and evening, Bhutanese refugees would fill busses between Chelsea and East Boston on their way to help make New England’s busiest airport function.  

Strangers Become Family

In 2011, in response to a growing need, IIB took on a new resettlement challenge: finding housing for single refugee men—most commonly Iraqi, Ethiopian, and Eritrean—who had been forced to immigrate independent of their families, were not used to living without them, and could not afford individual living arrangements. Sharing a new home with several people whom they had never met, and often beginning without a common language, created another whole level of uncertainty for people who were already enduring tremendous change. Their IIB Case Specialists made many house visits to help these new arrivals connect across languages and cultures. The results were often beautiful, as many of these households came to form tight and lasting bonds, and to rely on one another as they worked toward self-sufficiency. 

Family Reunification

In 2011, IIB launched a new initiative in response to a growing crisis in Central America. An epidemic of deadly and destabilizing gang violence throughout the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvator had led to a record surge of children no longer safe in their home countries who undertook long and dangerous journeys unaccompanied to cross the U.S.-Mexico Border in search of family members in the U.S. 

With support from the federal government, IIB began the region’s first Family Reunification Program to help unaccompanied children apprehended at the border reunite with their families in safe households, receive physical and mental health care, enroll in school, and integrate into New England communities.   

A Family of Agencies

That same year, the International Institute of Boston formally joined its own family of sorts. Back in 1994, IIB worked with a network of faith-based community groups to establish an office in Manchester, New Hampshire. In 2001, a formal collaboration began with the International Institute of Lowell, in Massachusetts, a partner agency founded in 1918. In 2011, the three offices formally merged into a new regional agency: The International Institute of New England. This union represented a new era of collaboration, facilitating the sharing of best practices and other resources across locations and giving each office more options in searching for housing and optimal services for each new arrival. 

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Building on the success of this period, the International Institute continues to provide tailored support to refugee and immigrant women and girls through our WILLOW Fund, resettles single arrivals as well as families, and serves hundreds of unaccompanied children each year through a program that now spans New England and New York. Last year, the International Institute of New England (IINE) served more than 20,000 refugees and immigrants, and through its collaborations ensures our newest neighbors find welcome and opportunity in our communities every day. 

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 ninth installment of our series “100 Years of Welcome: Commemorating IINE’s Boston Centennial.” The previous installment, “1985–1994: Protecting New Bostonians,” described the International Institute of Boston’s continuing efforts to resettle refugees of displacement crises in Southeast Asia, Northern Africa, and the former Soviet Union; the organization’s growing legal and advocacy work; and how it assisted thousands of immigrants granted amnesty by the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. 

Facilitating Mutual Aid

In the mid-1990s, the International Institute of Boston (IIB) remained an important source of support for the communities it had helped to build through refugee resettlement over the past two decades by working with their mutual aid organizations. It hosted the formation of a Vietnamese Mutual Support Group, began working with Boston’s Ethiopian Community Mutual Assistance Association, and hosted meetings for several similar groups from growing immigrant populations.  

Hosting “Dreams of Freedom”

In 1998, IIB moved its offices from Commonwealth Ave, where it had been since the mid-1960s, to a larger space at One Milk Street in Boston’s Financial District, with room for more classrooms, a new computer lab, and more.  

This new space would be uniquely open to the public. In its basement, IIB created Dreams of Freedom: Boston’s Immigration Museum.  

Building on the legacy of the New England Folk Festival, which IIB helped organize to share the rich cultural traditions of new immigrants, Dreams of Freedom offered interactive exhibits showcasing photographs, artifacts, and personal stories that offered glimpses into the lives of the immigrants and refugees who resettled in Boston over the decades. The museum also hosted lectures, workshops, and community discussions on issues such as immigration laws, community integration, and the challenge of cultural and racial discrimination. In the early 2000s, the museum sponsored and hosted screenings by the Human Rights Watch Film Festival.

Pursuing Dreams

One Milk Street quickly became the home of several new integration programs that helped IIB clients pursue goals from getting a first job in the U.S., to buying a car and a home, to achieving citizenship—their own “dreams of freedom.” A one million dollar grant from the Boston Foundation and a partnership with Hilton Hotels helped launch a skills training program to place more than 260 newcomers into jobs at Boston hotels. A federally funded Saving for Success program not only offered newcomers financial literacy, banking, and money management skills, but also helped them set up a savings accounts and set savings goals for a major purchase, and then provided matching funds once the goals had been achieved. A new class in “Homebuying 101” was offered first in Vietnamese and Haitian Creole, and then later in Chinese and Cape Verdean Creole.  A new Citizenship Center provided refugees and immigrants with citizenship examination preparation and other naturalization services.

Defending the Most Vulnerable

Other new and important IIB programs served immigrant populations who needed special care in order to recover from past persecution and begin to thrive. IIB launched the International Survivors Center to provide case management and counseling services to survivors of torture and other war-related traumas, and also secured its first contract from the U.S. Department of Justice to serve victims of human trafficking, providing mental health services, housing, and legal assistance. IIB also became a regional resource in combating human trafficking, convening and training a network of law enforcement officers to better identify and serve trafficking survivors. 

Kosovo Kids and Lost Boys

IIB continued to welcome new groups of refugees to Boston and to help them recover and integrate. At the end of the 1990s, a crisis erupted in Eastern Europe’s Balkan Peninsula. Ethnic conflict had been violently tearing apart the country formerly known as Yugoslavia for several years, and in 1999, NATO intervened, bombing government forces and temporarily seizing control of the flashpoint region of Kosovo to try and end the large-scale ethnic slaughter. In the mass displacement that followed, refugees from regions on multiple sides of the conflict were resettled in Boston. Many were ethnic Albanians from Kosovo eager to join an already sizable community of Albanian Bostonians whom IIB had served over the years. As they welcomed these new refugees, IIB was particularly mindful of the many children arriving and organized a “Kosovo Kids” summer program in the Boston suburb of Lynn to help them prepare for attending local public schools in the fall. 

In the same period, IIB also welcomed to Boston 75 of the so-called “Lost Boys of Sudan,” a group of teenage refugees from the Dinka tribe of South Sudan who had been captured as young children and forced to serve as soldiers in the Northern Sudanese army. Many had fled first to Ethiopia, and then to Kenya, where they endured brutal treatment and extended confinement in the Kakuma refugee camp. In the early 2000s, escalation of violence in the Sudan Civil War had brought renewed attention to the plight of the “Lost Boys” and thousands were welcomed into the U.S. In Boston, IIB provided arrivals with English language classes and case management services. Some used the new computer lab in IIB’s Milk Street office to search for their lost family members. 

With Us or Against Us

Public sentiment towards refugees shifted dramatically in the wake of the events of September 11, 2001. Soon after members of the international terrorist group Al-Qaeda hijacked four airplanes and flew them into the Twin Towers of New York’s World Trade Center, and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., killing nearly 3,000 civilians, President George W. Bush announced a U.S.-led “War on Terror.” For this new kind of war only one rule was made clear: all the nations of the world were “either with us, or you are with the terrorists.” 

As the U.S. military mobilized for “Operation Enduring Freedom,” an attack on the repressive Taliban regime who ruled Afghanistan and had harbored Al Qaeda’s terrorists, a mood of fear, division and prejudice reverberated across the U.S., including in Boston, from which two of the hijacked flights had originated. Many Muslim and Arab Americans became the 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 press release about the crisis, 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. 

As the war in Afghanistan continued, in 2003, the War on Terror expanded with the advent of “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” Both conflicts created massive displacement, but in response to the 9/11 attacks the U.S. curtailed the refugee admissions program from 70,000 in 2001 to about 27,000 in 2002 and vetting of refugees from Arab and Muslim countries became increasingly restrictive. But as the first admitted Afghan and Iraqi refugees from these wars began to arrive in Boston, IIB was there to welcome them into services and proudly help them to become Bostonians.  

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Many of the programs first established at the International Institute of Boston in the 1990s and early 2000s continue to thrive and evolve at the International Institute of New England today. Our “Ready, Set, Service!” program helps new arrivals to Boston train and find work in today’s local hospitality industry. A savings program is still offered today and continues to help refugees and immigrants to purchase their first cars and homes here. IINE continues to provide programs specifically for victims of torture and our Trafficking Victims Assistance Program (TVAP) helps hundreds each year to recover and rebuild their lives.  

IINE continues to stand with all victims of discrimination and to connect them to the community resources they need to feel welcome, safe, and supported.  

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

Welcome to the eighth installment of our series “100 Years of Welcome: Commemorating IINE’s Boston Centennial.” The previous installment, “1975–1984: Refining Refugee Resettlement,” described the International Institute of Boston (IIB)’s resettlement of refugees of the Vietnam War and the increased government partnership and scaled up services made possible by the Refugee Act of 1980, including stronger legal services and new programs addressing mental health challenges. 

The passage of the Refugee Act in 1980 increased refugee admissions and created the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement. This led to new growth, collaboration, and support for the International Institute of Boston, which shifted its chief focus in the early 1980s to refugee resettlement to meet the displacement crises created by the Vietnam War.  

IIB continued to support South Asian refugees throughout the 1980s, particularly in 1988, when the federal Amerasian Homecoming Act admitted to the U.S. thousands of refugee children of mixed American and Vietnamese parentage whose heritage was a source of discrimination in Vietnam. IIB resettled hundreds of these children and their families, welcoming them into the growing Vietnamese communities in and around Boston, and launched the “Alternative Education Project” to help them learn literacy, English, and math. Throughout the 1970s and 80s, new attorneys and paralegals joined the Legal Services team to help refugees through the complicated process of applying for citizenship, and to reunite their families in the U.S. 

Welcome for Post-Cold War Refugees

Soon after, when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, bringing the Cold War to an end, IINE welcomed thousands of Jews fleeing persecution under Soviet regimes. Also welcomed were many refugees from the former Yugoslavia, where a civil war had led to ethnic cleansing and other mass atrocities. As brutal conflicts erupted throughout Northern Africa, IIB welcomed refugees from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, and Sudan.  

At the same time refugee arrivals were surging, however, federal funding for refugee resettlement was decreasing dramatically and by the mid-1980s IIB’s staff and operations were forced to contract. By 1985, IIB had reduced to a small but mighty crew of staff members who spoke a collective 17 languages, including attorneys and paralegals who had been added to bolster the Legal Services team. For a time, IIB’s principal program focus became legal services and advocacy. 

Legal Clinics and Emergency Assistance

1986 was a particularly momentous year for the Legal Services team as IIB launched the first immigration legal clinic of its kind in the area. In weekly workshops, the clinic provided Boston’s immigrant community with assistance in completing immigration forms and preparing their applications for permanent residency and citizenship.  

That same year, IIB formed the Immigration Detainees Emergency Assistance (IDEA) program, bringing together 50 local attorneys to free people being held at an immigration detention center in Boston’s North End. Headed by an IIB paralegal and funded by The Boston Foundation and Lawyers Committee for International Human Rights, the IDEA program provided training to volunteer lawyers, assisted with interpretation and document preparation, monitored hearing dates, and raised bond money to help safely extricate those detained.  

A Partner in Reform

It was also in 1986 that a blockbuster Immigration Reform and Control Act was signed by President Ronald Regan, dramatically altering the landscape in which IIB operated. The bill balanced stricter border controls and penalties for hiring undocumented workers with large-scale amnesty for the nation’s population of undocumented immigrants—a tremendous opportunity for foreign-born individuals living in the U.S. without secure legal status to obtain permanent residency and pathways to citizenships. All immigrants who had entered the U.S. before 1982, and all immigrant farm workers who could prove that they had been employed for at least 90 days, were eligible. There was a one-year window to apply, and doing so required a fee, fingerprinting, and a whole host of paperwork. IIB was one of several agencies throughout the country designated to help immigrants complete applications, through which about three million Americans gained legal status. 

Many of IIB’s legal services today are shaped by the other major reform of the era: the Immigration Act of 1990. This act created Temporary Protective Status (TPS) to admit people from countries plagued by armed conflict, environmental disasters, or other extreme threats, and permitted them to work while in the U.S. It raised the caps on both immigrant and refugee admission, created a new preference category for family immigration, and allowed employers to apply for temporary visas to hire skilled workers. 

Also, in another counterweight to the “quota system,” which, from the 1920s through the 1950s had restricted immigration by country largely based on ethnic discrimination (against which IIB had fought passionately), the Immigration Act of 1990 also created the “Diversity Lottery” to grant visas to people from nationality groups currently underrepresented in the U.S. This Act was not only another step forward in increasing the nation’s diversity, but also another victory for family reunification. In the mid-1990s IIB began working with families to help their eligible family members living abroad apply for this lottery in the hopes of being reunited.  

Victim Assistance and Advocacy

While working to secure legal rights for Boston’s immigrants and refugees, IIB was also helping to ensure they were welcomed by neighbors and community members and working to protect their physical and mental health and safety. IIB’s Social Services department connected newcomers to counseling and crisis intervention support services, including a Victim Assistance program for those who had faced assault, racial harassment, or domestic violence. IIB partnered closely with the Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence and became the first agency of its kind to offer resources for responding to domestic violence in a beginning-level English-language class.  
 
To help protect rights and promote support for newcomers throughout Massachusetts, in 1987, IIB joined with other local resettlement agencies, immigrant-led community organizations, faith-based organizations, civil and human rights advocates, and providers of social, legal and health services to found the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition (MIRA). The Coalition’s first Executive Director was former IIB Program Director Muriel Heiberger. Highly active today, MIRA is now 100-organizations strong. 

New Partners and Frontiers

During the 1990s, IIB’s service ambitions continued to exceed its size, inspiring more new partnerships. One way the agency was able to expand capacity was to invest in volunteer training programs, bringing community members directly into the work of welcoming newcomers. Once trained, a crucial new corps of volunteers was integrated into both direct service and education programs.  

In 1994, IIB connected with a community group that was serving refugees in the nearby gateway city of Manchester, New Hampshire, and opened its first field office outside of Boston, paving the way for what would later become the multi-site International Institute of New England.  

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Today, IINE’s Immigration Legal Services team continues to help persecuted immigrants, including thousands with Temporary Protective Status, to apply for permanent residency and citizenship and to reunite their families. It also helps businesses to apply for temporary visas to employ skilled immigrant workers. IINE leadership sits on the Advisory Council of today’s Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition. Hundreds of community volunteers are integrated into across our organization in all departments. Our Manchester site serves more than 1,000 refugees and immigrants from countries throughout the world with housing and basic needs support, education, career services, legal services, and advocacy.  

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

Welcome to the seventh installment of our series “100 Years of Welcome: Commemorating IINE’s Boston Centennial.” The previous installment, “1965-1974: Welcoming the World,” described how hard-won reforms to the U.S. immigration system allowed the International Institute of Boston (IIB) to welcome a more diverse population of immigrants and refugees from throughout the world.

“Refugee” Redefined

1975 marked the official end to the Vietnam War, which had raged for thirty years. Its long aftermath would drive hundreds of thousands of refugees to flee Vietnam and its surrounding countries. This mass displacement caused by a war in which the U.S. had been centrally involved led to major changes in federal policies towards refugees—and in response, major changes to the scope and model of the International Institute of Boston.  

The United States welcomed almost one million refugees over the course of ten years after the Vietnam War, and the Boston area was a primary destination. IIB helped new Vietnamese arrivals resettle in Chinatown, Allston/Brighton, East Boston, the Fields Corner section of Dorchester, and later, in the suburbs of Quincy, Randolph, and Malden.

The first group of refugees were mainly officials from the defeated South Vietnamese government. A much larger wave began to arrive in Greater Boston between 1978 and the mid-1980s, after Vietnam invaded Kampuchea (Cambodia) in 1979 and the genocidal “killing fields” that followed. At the same time, a border war between China and Vietnam led to a mass exodus of Vietnam’s ethno-Chinese population, most of whom fled in small leaky boats in terrifying conditions.  

A series of new federal laws authorized increased refugee admissions, but the most transformative was the Refugee Act of 1980. This law adopted the United Nations definition of a refugee as any person who is outside their country of nationality or habitual residence and is unable or unwilling to return due to “a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”  

The Refugee Act raised the annual ceiling for refugee admissions to 50,000 and gave the United States Executive Office the authority to admit additional refugees in response to emergencies. It also created a federally funded Office of Refugee Resettlement to work with states to fund and administer post-resettlement services through a network of local organizations, including the International Institutes. This relationship still drives much of IINE’s work today. 

Scaling Up Services

With increased federal and state financial support, IIB programs for resettlement, education, employment, and other services expanded dramatically. IIB hired several Vietnamese staff and became a sponsoring agency for resettling refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. It provided culturally appropriate services, including special English language programs for Asian American youth, and basic literacy classes for adults. Rooms at the IIB office at 287 Commonwealth Avenue were occupied all day and night and were partitioned off to accommodate still more classes. The number of staff and volunteers grew exponentially. IIB board members took on an active service support role, forming a Motor Corps to meet incoming planes of refugee arrivals, and provide new refugees with transportation to reach their new homes, shop for clothing and groceries, and attend job interviews. While education and direct services became the priority for IIB, a New England Indo-Chinese Refugees Association was formed to host Buddhist weddings and other ceremonies and events for IIB’s growing populations of Southeast Asian clients.   

Flexing New Legal Muscle

While IIB had always provided clients with guidance on navigating complicated and ever-changing immigration laws, in the mid-1970s, IIB began hiring staff attorneys to head its Legal Services department. One of the first of these was Deborah Anker, a second generation American whose parents had escaped the Holocaust. Anker would later go on to teach the first immigration law course at Harvard University, where she founded the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program, and still teaches law today.

Anker began her tenure at a time when, in addition to its work with people displaced by the Vietnam War, IIB was working to welcome refugees from Ethiopia who were fleeing a violent and repressive regime whose rise ultimately led to a civil war that spread famine, poverty, and further persecution. One of the Ethiopian clients whom Anker helped to bring to Boston was Daniel Yohannes, a new American who would one day be appointed by President Barack Obama as a U.S. Ambassador to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. 

Leveraging New Support 

In the 1980s, with more funding now available at the state level and more staff to both pursue grants and implement programs, IIB was able to launch a series of initiatives to help newly arrived refugees rebuild their lives in the mid- to long-term.  

When thousands fled Cuba in the “Mariel Boatlift” exodus, IIB secured a grant from the Massachusetts Department of Social Services to establish a new multiservice center for them in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston. In its first year, the center helped more than 200 Cuban refugees, securing jobs for 110.  

With other new federal and state funds, IIB created training programs and resources for teachers of English for Speakers of Languages throughout Greater Boston, started its first Adult Literacy class, created special programs to help Asian American children and their mothers, and initiated a new Social Services program emphasizing bilingual and bicultural counseling to help address the trauma experienced by refugees both as a result of and after their migration journeys.  

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Today, the International Institute continues to innovate and expand programming based on the needs of new arrivals. We work with the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement and with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to implement more than 80 federal and state contracted programs. A Staff Attorney heads our Immigration Legal Services department, which provides pro bono or low bono support to more than 1,000 refugees and immigrants each year. Program staff are trained to provide trauma-informed services, and we regularly convene peer support groups and engage with community partners to address the mental health needs of the refugees and immigrants we serve – ensuring they find safety, wellbeing, and strength as they face their new future.  

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

Welcome to the sixth installment of our series “100 Years of Welcome: Commemorating IINE’s Boston Centennial.” The previous installment, “1954–1964: Refugee Relief Over Quotas,” described how the International Institute of Boston (IIB) found ways to circumvent and lobby against the discriminatory federal “quota system” introduced in 1924, which set caps on the number of immigrants admitted to the US from designated countries. 

Hard-Won Reform Arrives at Last

The International Institute of Boston (IIB) had long opposed the quota system and had publicly lobbied against it since the 1950s when IIB Executive Director Pauline Gardescu testified before Congress to call for its abolition, and she and IIB Board President Robert Neiley continued to advocate for reform into the early sixties. By the middle of the decade, the stage was finally set. The aftermath of World War II had begun to move public opinion toward a renewed appreciation for foreign allies and affinity for people seeking freedom, greater awareness of refugee crises, and support for newcomers who arrived as wives of veterans. In addition, the advent of the civil rights era had increased sensitivity to racial discrimination. 

In 1965, IIB and its allies finally claimed victory when the Immigration and Nationality Act (also known as the Hart Celler Act) was signed into law. Echoing the policies IIB outlined in a 1961 letter to President Kennedy, the Act abandoned the old discriminatory country quotas, raised the number of immigrants admitted per year, and created preferences for family reunification, skilled workers, and refugees. The law would come to transform the country’s immigration patterns. In Boston and across the US more broadly, a predominantly European immigrant population gradually gave way to a more global one and increasing populations of newcomers from Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean.  

Operation Kindness

Following the trend of the Cold War years, the first new wave of immigrants were refugees from a nation suddenly besieged by Soviet tanks. When new reformist leader Alexander Dubek instituted freedom of speech, press, and travel in his communist country, Czechoslovakia was invaded by the Soviet Union and its allies seeking to quell the “Prague Spring” by massacring protestors. Tens of thousands of Czechoslovaks fled. In Boston, the effort to welcome and resettle refugees from the conflict, dubbed “Operation Kindness,” was led by the International Institute with support from the Boston Committee, American Fund for Czechoslovak Refugees, which was founded by an IIB board member and housed in its offices. As the Fund provided transportation support, IIB focused on working with its networks to find the new arrivals housing and employment. 

Welcoming the World

As more newcomers arrived, IIB’s staff grew from 10 in 1965 to 70 a decade later. To better welcome and serve this more diverse group of new arrivals, IIB introduced an array of globally oriented programs. Leading these efforts was Gaspar Jako, a Hungarian immigrant who was IIB’s first Executive Director born outside the US.  

In 1970, Jako launched the Whole World Celebration, an annual international fair featuring multicultural arts and crafts, food, and performances held at the Commonwealth Armory. Like the International Institute’s earlier cultural events, the Whole World Celebration showcased immigrant cultures of the broader community. European ethnic groups were now joined by those from India, Japan, China, Indonesia, Egypt, and Kenya. 

IIB founded Ambassadors for Friendship, an exchange program for high school students that sent 750 high school students and teachers abroad during their spring vacation, while bringing foreign students to the US. The Ambassadors program later expanded across the country, sending more than 9,000 American students abroad in 1973. 

Supporting First Nations

Notably, at the same time that IIB was working to better serve a more diverse population of new arrivals, they were also supportive of Americans from the native Micmac, Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Aroostook, Mohawk, Navajo, and Sioux tribes, who were increasingly migrating to Boston from Canada, New York, and the western US. IIB hosted several meetings of the Boston Indian Council as they sought to establish their own cultural center and provide scholarships for youth. 

Expanding Language Access

By 1973, as Boston’s population continued to become more diverse, IIB dramatically expanded its language instruction offerings. Spanish language classes were added to help local medical personnel, teachers, and social workers to serve a growing population from Puerto Rico and Latin America.

Additional foreign language classes were offered in French, Italian, and Portuguese. While IINE continued to host English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) classes at its offices on Commonwealth Avenue, new partnerships were also formed to bring ESOL classes on–site at local companies to help immigrant employees succeed in the workplace. 

The Golden Door Awards

The most enduring tradition that IIB began at this time was the launch of the Golden Door Awards. Taking its name from a line in Emma Lazarus’s poem on the Statue of Liberty— “I lift my lamp beside the Golden Door”—the award was first given in 1970 to honor the contributions of a notable US citizen who had immigrated to the country. Chinese architect I.M. Pei was the first recipient, followed by Boston Pops conductor Arthur Fiedler (Austrian), restaurateur Anthony Athanas (Albanian), and Star Market founder Stephen Mugar (Armenian). Recognizing past honorees from 25 different countries, the Golden Door Award continues today, honoring immigrants’ contributions to life in the US and providing an important source of funding for the International Institute’s work.  

Today, the International Institute is grateful to be able to welcome and support refugees and immigrants from more than 75 countries throughout the world. We continue to forge new partnerships between our ESOL programs and local businesses to help prepare today’s refugees and immigrants to work in industries that desperately need their skills and services. We also continue the tradition of the Golden Door Award to bring our community together to honor and uplift the stories of immigrants that strengthen and enrich our region.  

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