For Subscribers
Bill Nemitz: When immigrants like him come knocking, he’ll be waiting at Maine’s door
Reza Jalali, the new head of the Greater Portland Immigrant Welcome Center, is the right person at the right time for a crucial job.
Share
To fully appreciate the new job Reza Jalali starts next week, you need to go back to the very beginning.
It was 1985. Jalali, a Kurdish refugee from Iran, had just arrived in Maine from India, where he’d gone to attend college and, with the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the subsequent war with Iraq, he could no longer return home.