9/11 Stories: Malden's Immigration Advocates

Note: This article is part of Patch's week-long series on the tenth anniversary of 9/11.

“You're a Terrorist - Go Back to Your Own Country”

Director Diane Portnoy founded Malden's nearly 20 years ago, with humble ambitions: to offer free English classes to some of the country's newest residents. 

Ten years later, when the country saw a spike in hate crimes and anti-immigrant sentiment in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, Portnoy said Malden was no exception.

Times have changed, she said. But the harassment her students faced left a lasting impression on the advocate.

“Most of our students were afraid to come to school,” she said. “They were telling me that strangers would just walk down the street and yell terrible things...at anyone who looked foreign. If it was a woman wearing a headscarf, especially, they would yell terrible things at her.”

Portnoy remembers one student, en route to one of the center's English classes, being told: "You're a terrorist - go back to your own country."

But the xenophobic backlash (PDF) wasn't limited to cowardly street harassment, either.

“I would be out with people in social situations, with people that are professionals – I don't know how to say it, but, really, people who should know better,” she said. “I actually had a couple of them come to me and say, 'you know, Diane, the problem with this country is immigrants...they just come here to take our jobs, so many of them are on welfare,' and so on.”

Portnoy said she realized the Immigration Center needed a new 'class' - this time, for Americans themselves.

"Incredible Contributions"

Portnoy is no stranger to the hostility immigrants can face in their adopted home country - in 1949, her family escaped anti-semitism and Soviet occupation in post-war Poland, arriving at Ellis Island on a converted battleship.

The family then settled in a mostly jewish neighbhorhood in Malden, where Portnoy has lived ever since.

There, she and her parents heard the same kind of hateful slurs in the 1950s that her students heard 50 years later - “Hitler should've killed all the jews,” and worse.

“I saw the effect it had on my parents, how that made them feel,” she said. “I couldn't help but feel for my students."

"I knew my history, and I knew that every (American) immigrant population had gone through this," she continued. "And every ethnic group that has (emigrated) has proven this wrong, and has gone on to make incredible contributions.”

Preparations for another 'incredible contribution' of her own took about two years, in which time Portnoy hired staff, raised funds and conceptualized a new public education program with it's new director, Dr. Marcia Hohn.

The program has since commissioned a number of studies, held teacher forums and maintains an online resource of information about the impact immigrant communities have on American culture.

The foundation has taken a particular interest in commissioning research studies on the habits of immigrants as entrepeneurs, workers and consumers. For example, Portnoy notes, immigrants are three times as likely to open a business than those born in the United States.

The group continues to work on their next project, a book about the American immigrant experience.

"A constant battle"

Reflecting on the past ten years, Portnoy said 9/11 "opened her eyes" to popular misperceptions of immigrants in a 21st century America.

“You turn on your TV, read some newspaper articles, and you realize...you will see people just don't understand.”

“It's a constant battle,” she concluded.

So far, her center has helped over 6,500 immigrants from 72 countries learn English.

For more information on classes and programs, visit their website.