By Katelyn Polantz, From The National Law Journal

The first video that business immigration attorney Adam Rosser showed to a luncheon of his Hunton & Williams colleagues in Washington two weeks ago began like any vacation home movie: Picturesque ocean, bright blue sky and the rocky beach of the island of Lesvos in Greece. Three people in the foreground wave to a vessel out at sea.

Then the boat drifts closer into view, with dozens of people aboard. A few jump off, and several of the people on shore wade out to the raft. One slips on the rocks where waves break. Photographers swarm the scene, turning the crowd into a commotion.

Rosser, a 44-year-old counsel to Hunton, had thought the European migrant crisis might reveal itself while he and his father vacationed for 10 days in Greece this September. But the sight grabbed him more deeply than he had expected and turned him into a volunteer. The crisis has since become his personal cause.

“I remember it very vividly,” Rosser said. “There was a few hours I was processing everything. It felt like days. It’s like seeing a war zone but no bullets are flying. You’re seeing the result of war.”

Scale of the crisis

The Rossers’ vacation after that first encounter with a migrant boat centered at “ground zero,” Lesvos’ northern shoreline. Rosser, in his gray pants and white T-shirt, lifted Syrian, Afghan and Iraqi child after child from boats, while his father, John, a retired history professor, filmed the scene. An image from the end of Rosser’s trip shows the beach littered with dozens of abandoned orange life vests.

“You have to remember every life vest represents a different story,“ he said, explaining his recent trips to his Washington colleagues.

Half a million Syrian, Afghan, Iraqi and other migrants have taken the 90-minute boat ride from Turkey to Lesvos across the Mediterranean Sea this year. Many flee civil unrest and terrorist groups in their home countries.

More than 60 people sometimes boarded inflatable boats meant for 15. The families packed in so tightly that volunteers struggled to grasp onto the children to get them to shore first, and some adults couldn’t walk on the beach because the weight of others had pinned and immobilized their legs on the boat.

In October, a peak month for immigration, more than 8,000 migrants arrived daily in Greece. The boat landings are relentless. In Rosser’s videos, new boats arrive on the same stretch of Grecian beach before the previous boat’s passengers have set foot on land.  

Next endeavors in Lesvos

After the September trip, Rosser prepared emotionally to return to Greece. He found a wetsuit and better shoes that would dry overnight after a day in the sea. He worked with two women from California and Ireland to start a grassroots group called Sea of Solidarity, which his colleagues at the law firm helped him to register as a nonprofit. And he booked a flight back to Lesvos for November.

Rosser said he always felt predisposed to want to help people in need. He remembers when his family fostered a teenage refugee from Laos; Rosser was 10 years old. And he had pursued human rights legal issues while in law school at Georgetown University Law Center in the 1990s, even working on the asylum case of a man from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, then known as Zaire.

But the European migrant crisis was different from anything he’d worked with in 15 years of law practice at Hunton & Williams. When he left in November for Greece again, Rosser set his out-of-office email message for the first time ever, he said.

“I do believe most people, if they saw what I saw, would have reacted in a similar way,” he said.

His second trip this fall looked much like the first. For three weeks, Rosser lifted children and steadied adults as they climbed from their beached boats onto the shore. He wore a GoPro camera on his head, since his father didn’t accompany him as videographer on this trip.

Volunteers like Rosser, mostly working with a Norwegian group called A Drop in the Ocean, deflated their boats with knives, then brought the groups snacks, mylar blankets and toys and red balloons for the children. Some of the refugees shared what they brought: Rosser remembers one man who insisted on giving figs to his helpers.

Rosser’s charity, Sea of Solidarity, has helped beyond the beach. Since its founding about two months ago, it has raised more than $50,000 and spent $25,000 to buy hot meals, fruit, emergency blankets, sleeping bags and toys for immigrants and radios for volunteers. The group’s only administrative cost has been $66 for a post office box, he said, and the group is now determining how to spend the additional money.

“Small things go a long way. You don’t need a lot of money to keep people from being wet and cold at night,” he said.

Rosser has also reached out to other immigration lawyers in the U.S. to see how they could assist with legal aid groups in Greece.

“If he wanted to go again, I would support it, our team would support it, and the firm would support it,” Ian Band, Rosser’s supervisor and a Hunton & Williams immigration partner and D.C. pro bono committee leader, said.

IMAGE: Hunton & Williams attorney Adam Rosser took a three-week trip to an island in Greece this November to help Syrian and Iraqi refugees disembark from the boats they used to leave Turkey. Courtesy photo

For more on this story and video go to: http://www.nationallawjournal.com/id=1202745808643/Hunton-amp-Williams-Lawyer-Turns-Vacation-Into-Humanitarian-Mission#ixzz3vj7oX0tE