Together, we spread the gospel of peace and encourage cooperation locally, in the United States and globally. This is the podcast that focuses on Peace with Justice Sunday within the United Methodist Church. Today we’re honored to have Allison Rutland Soulen as our guest.

Episode Highlights

00:20 // Rich introduces Allison Rutland Soulen and welcomes her to the show.

00:41 // Allison tells us about Just Neighbors and how it evolved.

01:50 // Allison talks about the Just Neighbors’ volunteers.

03:00 // Allison gives us a sense of the folks they help and the responses they receive.

05:10 // Allison talks about the wide variety of faiths they help and support.

06:27 // Allison talks about the connection between Peace with Justice Sunday and Just Neighbors.

08:45 // Allison states that support from the general church, through Peace with Justice Sunday is critical to the organizations.

09:51 // Allison offers contact information.

Episode Transcript

Rich – Well hey everybody, welcome to the podcast. So glad that you’ve decided to spend some time with us today. We’re in for a real treat here as we have an interview today with Allison Rutland Soulen. She’s the Executive Director at Just Neighbors in Falls Church in Northern Virginia. Super excited to have you on the show today Allison thanks for joining us.

Allison – Thank you for having me.

Rich – I would if we could start with you telling us just about a bit of the history, the flavor, tell us about Just Neighbors.

Allison – Just Neighbors is a ministry of the Arlington district of the Virginia conference here. We provide immigration legal services to low income immigrants. Folks of all face, all nationalities and we crew out of the ESL program at a local church, because there were students who had problems. I remember one, he applied for a driver’s license and in those days you could without papers, then he said, “I need to register for the selective service, should I do this?” I didn’t know but I was an attorney, still am an attorney. So I began to poke about and several of us came together and started Just Neighbors ministry and quickly it evolved to simply immigration legal services, because of the nature of the neighborhood.

Over the years we have used a thousand of volunteers. You know, local laypeople in local ministry to their neighbors.

Rich – Now the people that are volunteering, are they folks that just have a legal background or are they folks from a wide variety of background? Give us a sense of the folks that are volunteering with you.

Allison – It’s a wide variety of backgrounds. In any one time it’s about maybe a third that are attorneys. Then the rest, two thirds, are maybe interpreting for us, because we use languages from around the world. We’ve had clients from around 127 countries.

Rich – Wow.

Allison – So we really need various languages, yes. That’s been fun.

Rich – That’s incredible, wow.

Allison – Yeah people in this area tend to think it’s Spanish but we’ve got a lot… in fact one of our largest population now is Egyptian because of the persecution of the Coptic Christians.

Rich – Right.

Allison – So we use translators, we have paralegals who are doing internships with their school program, we have folks retired who come and help answer phones and file and photocopy, just a wide range of volunteers.

Rich – That’s very cool. Now give us a sense of maybe some of the… obviously everyone’s interaction with the immigration system is a little different and unique, but are there kind of patterns that you’re seeing as you’re interacting with the folks that you help?

Allison – Well in a sense because we help the most vulnerable. If you think of immigration as this huge intake valve, who do we help? We’re able to help about 20% to 30% of people who call us for help.

Rich – Okay.

Allison – So over the years we’ve evolved to help those who no one else will help.

Rich – Right.

Allison – And because they don’t have money, so it’s 200% or less of the federal poverty guideline and we can do that because churches and individuals and foundations support us, helps out with fees. So by definition asylees, refugees, by definition have been persecuted.

We also help, usually about 20% of our clients, 20% to 30% in any one year are victims of domestic violence who have left the abuser, who has often used immigration status to keep her tracked. We have helped men but most of them are women and their children, help them to live free of the abuser with the papers so that they’re not threatened with deportation and separation from their kids.

Then we help folks with just temporary, just temporary needs. If there’s a natural disaster or civil war in their homeland, then our government gives them temporary permission to be in the United States.

So the typical [Inaudible 00:04:21] is a client that’s incredibly grateful to be in the United States. It’s a safety place, it’s a place of safety, it’s not merely economics, it’s just where I can live, it’s just where I can survive. And just profound gratitude that we’re helping them. They’re “Well how can you help us? I haven’t got money, I didn’t think I would be able to do this.” They have volunteers who love them, who hug them, who pray with them, they just make them feel that, yes you’re loved, you’re cared for. God’s in on it.

Rich – Very cool. Now do you have people from a wide variety of faith backgrounds that you’re helping or are you restrictive on that front?

Allison – We have a wide variety. We don’t ask what their faith is. We know we have Muslims from Pakistan, Afghanistan. We know we have Christians, Coptic Egyptians I mentioned and we have Christians out of Pakistan and Afghanistan as religious asylees. So it’s a wide range.

Rich – Very cool. Well it’s so good to hear lawyers doing well. So many times lawyers get kicked in our culture and a part of what I love about this is just the great work of folks using their skills to help people really in a tough spot. I imagine by definition, everyone who’s interacting with you is in some sort of distressed situation, these aren’t casual legal issues or casual immigration issues that they’re facing.

Allisson – That’s true. We got several thank you notes last year, where the client would say, “My attorney was an angel, you were an angel,” it’s not very often you think of attorneys as angels.

Rich – Very cool. What is your connection, or what is Just Neighbor’s connection with Peace with Justice Sunday? How do those two fit together?

Allison – Well Peace with Justice provides funding to various agencies that deal with justice issues and Just Neighbors is one of them. We began in 1996 and Peace with Justice was an early funder for us. So for several years, when we were just beginning to service it provided important funding for us.

We fund our staff, we have staff attorneys and a volunteer coordinator who then provide the expertise to mentor our volunteers but we don’t operate solely on volunteer work.

Rich – Right.

Allison – Then most recently Peace with Justice has provided funds for us to help with kids, with youth and young adults. President Obama had instituted DACA, deferred action for childhood arrival, so if the youth or young adult got here at a young enough age and is in high school or graduated from high school, some other requirements, we can help them. We call it New Hope Project. We were over-bound and we set aside our other cases to deal with the kids. Then we had to go back, we had grants that required us to do certain types of cases.

Rich – Right.

Allison – My foundation and Peace with Justice helped us to hire in a new attorney, part time, to deal exclusively with adults. Then over time we just managed to make that a fulltime position, but it was instrumental in helping us expand to address this emerging need.

Rich – One of the great things about supporting all the special days, but this special day in particular of the United Methodist movement, is we’re getting an opportunity to stand side by side with folks like Allison who are doing incredible work and by supporting a day like this, it’s really just a great opportunity for our churches to get engaged.

If you were speaking to a church leader today, who’s maybe sitting on the fence or like, “Gosh these special days seem to come up all the time, there seems to be an opportunity at every turn,” and they’re hesitant about getting engaged, what would you say to them?

Allison – Get engaged. Our funders, our grant structure of funding, wants us to show that our board members donate and support the work of Just Neighbors and it’s the equivalent in the church positon. The United Methodist Church has a wonderful mission project, social justice outreach issues and service project and the broad church, the general church, needs to show that it’s supporting them, that it’s not just folks out on a lark. Yes they get local church support. Yes they get support from individual United Methodists, but the imprimatur of the general church is critical to the vitality of these organizations.

Rich – Very cool. Well Allison I appreciate your time today, I know you’re busy. Is there anything else you’d like to share with us as we close down today?

Allison – No thank you very much, I’ve enjoyed visiting with you.

Rich – Yeah thank you so much and if people want to get in touch with Just Neighbors, they want to learn more about what you do, how could they do that?

Allison – Well we have a wonderful website at www.justneighbors.org.

Rich – Great, thank you, have a wonderful day.

Allison – Thanks, you too.