Hiring from the served community for critical administrative support

Immigrant and Refugee Support

County of Los Angeles

Expand existing project, program, or initiative

AOL staff are national leaders and experts in the field of immigration law. AOL's staff have years of experience working immigrants who have survived not only persecution in their countries of origin but who have lived through the brutality and injustice of the United States immigration system. Specifically, refugees and asylum seekers new to the United States face significant obstacles as they seek employment. Many immigrants in removal proceedings or with pending applications wait months for work authorization and have little to no ability to earn an income. Even immigrants who have recently obtained legal status face barriers to steady, just employment that pays them fair wages, full benefits, and provides work-life balance due to language barriers, racism, cultural differences, etc. Therefore, AOL strives to hire employees from the communities we serve and provide competitive salaries, robust benefits, and work-life balance.

Our Los Angeles office's legal representation program provides holistic, wrap-around legal and social services to the most vulnerable asylum seekers, including those who are disabled, medically vulnerable, recently released from custody, immigrant youth, and those experiencing homelessness and/or food insecurity. AOL represents immigrants in affirmative representation before United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, defensive legal representation before the immigration courts and Board of Immigration Appeals, and other matters such as adjusting status, naturalizing, or applying for a T or U Visa. We represent immigrant youth in Special Immigrant Juvenile Status requests as well as Asylum applications. AOL also works closely with its network of social, linguistic, and community support resources, such as schools and county agencies to domestic violence and homeless shelters, to identify clients in need of representation in affirmative asylum applications and welcome the most vulnerable asylum-seekers to Los Angeles County. This grant will support in paying the salary of a dedicated Administrative Assistant from the served community to support the daily non-legal operations of this robust program.

Given Los Angeles county's proximity to the United States-Mexico border and numerous immigration detention centers, it is a place where many immigrants go to begin their lives in the United States after bravely crossing the border or leaving immigration detention. Our efforts to hire staff who are members of the communities we serve give us an advantage in engaging with community stakeholders. Hiring directly impacted staff to work at our Los Angeles office also provides us with a decentralized, organic means of engaging with the Los Angeles community rather than developing new connections as outsiders. In this way, our clients are also our community, so their families and their wider network are our key stakeholders. In serving them and staying in touch via our holistic representation model, we continuously educate the Los Angeles community we serve about our program and ensure that Los Angeles is a place where everyone can thrive and have access to opportunities to do so.

AOL uses quantitative measures such as tracking intakes, case filings, case outcomes, social services support, and case management progress points. AOL also tracks demographic data, application type, and other metrics. Qualitatively, we consider legal services to be a formalized form of storytelling, and we build our collective knowledge through sharing our observations, the experiences we hear from clients and their families/communities, and other narratives that inform our process and outcomes. Our Administrative Assistant acts as the eyes and ears of the daily workflow. They keep track of all cases, from beginning to end, ensuring that we are meeting goals, staying in constant communication with our clients, and making sure that nothing falls through the cracks in our cases. Each intake completed, each document filed with the court, each piece of mail served count as measurable evidence of our Administrative Assistant's impact in serving refugees and immigrants in Los Angeles.