The reason AID was founded was to address a crucial need, a gap in services that existed in the nonprofit legal services world in Arkansas. While many other states have nonprofit law firms that exist to serve immigrant and refugee survivors of violence, Arkansas had only two nonprofit law firms and they are recipients of funding from the Legal Services Corporation (LSC). LSC funds come with certain strings attached, entity-wide restrictions that effectively bar them from providing legal services to large portions of the immigrant and refugee community. Their staff members also have, per capita, less immigrants and less bilingual staff members than would be appropriate to meet the needs of monolingual immigrant survivors. While these two organizations do great work, many immigrants have learned not to seek services there. And while LSC funds do not restrict services to survivors of certain forms of violence, AID is known as the law firm that welcomes all immigrants with immigration-related legal needs and which specializes exclusively in the provision of immigration legal services as opposed to all sorts of civil legal services (for example, we do not do wills/trusts, divorces, etc).

AID is highly specialized in the areas of law that we practice and highly specialized in regard to the segment of Arkansas’s neighbors whom we serve: historically underserved minorities, women and children, and immigrants and refugees who have lacked access to services.