Just Neighbors Annual Report

Friends,

Last year, Just Neighbors saw a record number of lives changed by the work of our attorneys, staff, and volunteers; we helped the most families last year than any other year in our 26 year history! We were only able to do that because of YOUR financial support. Coming out of the pandemic, there were many challenges, including extremely high backlogs of case processing by USCIS and immigration courts, meaning adjudication of cases took much longer than usual. And while so much attention is focused on the border, much less is paid to the increasing number of immigrants who are seeking legal services.

The Washington Metropolitan area is the largest per capita resettlement area for unaccompanied minor children and Afghan refugees, most of whom have pathways to documentation, but require very complicated and time-consuming casework. As a result, our requests for service were up by 11% and continue to rise.

While we have continued to help more and more immigrants, the demand far outweighs our capacity to serve. We continue to seek additional funding to support our ongoing efforts and increasing need.

Also coming out of the pandemic, we have been rebuilding our volunteer program, including legal clinics, community outreach, volunteer attorneys and front-office support. More clients mean more need for document translation and interpretation, including languages beyond Spanish (Dari, Pashtu, Haitian Creole and indigenous Mayan languages). Because of our incredible volunteers, we have been able to minimize the costs of these services.

We actively advocated for issues that affect immigrants in our community on the federal, state, and local levels, pushing congress to pass the Afghan Adjustment Act (so far unsuccessful), supporting the establishment and/or renewal of Temporary Protected Status and championing humane border policies.

Meanwhile, we also made reforms internally by examining our own salary equity practices. With the significant growth over the last 5 years, we needed to address issues like living wages, equity across job types, recognition of language capabilities, and more. After a several month long process, we implemented phase 1 of a two year pay restructure, as well as non-negotiable salary structure for new hires based on actual skills and experience.

As we look ahead at 2023, we are working to increase our capacity to serve more unaccompanied minor children, bolster our work in the rural footprint, and build more support for our work in Maryland.

We are inspired by the resilience of our clients, the commitment of our volunteers, and the generosity of our donors. We are blessed with a dedicated, passionate, outstanding staff. We look forward to helping many more of our immigrant neighbors thrive.

We are grateful for your support and look forward to another strong year.

Erin