Fayetteville Justice for Our Neighbors

OUR MISSION

Fayetteville Justice for Our Neighbors (FJFON) provides low-income immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers with affordable, high-quality legal services and is dedicated to advancing education and advocacy that uplifts immigrants in food-processing and agriculture-dominant southeastern North Carolina and the wider communities where they live.

WHO WE ARE

Fayetteville Justice for Our Neighbors (FJFON) is a regional office of the national JFON network, which grew out of the United Methodist Committee on Relief’s (UMCOR) long commitment to refugees and immigrants. UMCOR established Justice for Our Neighbors in 1999. Since that time, Justice for Our Neighbors has grown to a network of 20 sites that support over 50 clinics to serve thousands of clients annually. The core function of this network is to provide high-quality, low-cost legal services that bring immigrants into permanent legal status - providing them a path for greater legal and economic security.

FJFON is the only immigration legal aid nonprofit in the southeast region of North Carolina, meaning that we are the only easily accessible option for many immigrants to obtain free advice and counsel and/or low-cost extended legal services. FJFON is also one of the few organizations on this side of the state focused on increasing knowledge of immigrant rights and legal pathways, and we are also unique in our drive to leverage church communities to foster legal outreach events as well as broader community conversations designed to dispel immigration myths and engender greater empathy and support for compassionate reforms.

WHAT WE DO

FJFON provides low-cost legal immigration services and conducts education and advocacy outreach for both immigrants and the larger community. Our outreach efforts focus on fostering conversations in churches and other public venues that promote just and equitable immigration reform, advocating for increased access to healthcare, employment protections, and other services often denied to immigrants, and conducting legal education trainings that provide immigrants and advocates the tools they need to navigate our system.

FJFON has represented 109 clients and 178 cases since December 2020 and has provided savings ranging from $154,000 to as much as $260,000 when compared against conservative estimates for private legal aid. We represent more than 60 different types of cases.

Through these varied efforts, FJFON is pursuing a strategy that improves the economic and personal lives of immigrants while engendering greater compassion in the larger community.

WHO WE SERVE

FJFON seeks to assist all immigrant families, women, and children with advice, counsel, or services in North Carolina. In just 7 months, we have received calls and assisted clients from as far as Charlotte, Greensboro, and Wilmington - representing a roughly 200-mile radius within the state. While we have served clients from around the globe, the constituency we serve hails largely from countries in Central America. Thus far, we have served clients from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, Barbados, Brazil, Venezuela, Peru, Vietnam, Yemen, Nigeria, and Ghana. The clients we serve are mainly among the working poor and predominantly fall below 150% of the poverty line. 

OUR VISION FOR CHANGE

FJFON has a philosophy for social responsibility and change that is rooted in the Christian belief that all people deserve to be treated with hospitality, compassion, and respect, as well as the belief that we should work collectively to create a just society centered on fairness and equality.

The clearest path towards this more just society lies in bringing our wider communities into this shared understanding, which is why FJFON is dedicated to providing education on the issues and laws affecting our immigrant neighbors as well as the positive impact that immigration provide our communities. This aim builds directly upon our drive to advocate for systemic change in both the law and its application that creates more equitable living standards for immigrants, as well as for improvements in work standards and other facets directly impacting these communities.

In conjunction with education and advocacy, FJFON also works to deliver immediate and impactful change for immigrants in our community by providing low-cost legal services that bring people into Permanent Legal Status, irrespective of race, religion, ethnicity, or ideology. In doing so, FJFON is removing the conditions that give rise to vulnerability while also providing dual forms of economic relief - both from the need to pay for expensive legal services and from work restrictions that impede immigrants from more formal work opportunities and protections.