In 1948, the Displaced Persons Act was passed, which opened the door to the U.S. for hundreds of thousands of people who had lost their homes or their homelands in the war. Thousands of people came to the San Francisco Bay Area as displaced persons, and the International Institute helped them resettle. For many months, the Institute was open until 10:00 or 11:00 at night, as victims of war and their families took the first steps toward building new lives. At the end of our third decade, International Institute’s work was defined by the damage and upheaval of the Second World War, which brought hardship to over 175,000 Mexican men working in the U.S. who had been granted special immigration status based on wartime labor needs. In the past, immigrants who worked for U.S. war efforts had been allowed to stay after the U.S. military demobilized. But a fear of job scarcity for returning soldiers branded Mexican workers a threat. The International Institute worked to promote understanding and directed efforts toward projects benefitting Spanish-speaking youth.