“My name is Joseph Andrei Hyman. I am 16, and I was adopted from Russia in 1996. My life here in America is much better than what it would have been in a Russian orphanage. I am very grateful to be where I am to today, and to have been taken out of the situation that I was placed in at birth. I have a wonderful adoptive family and couldn’t ask for more. They have given me food, water, shelter and love for the 15 and half years of my life, and they have always treated me right. I have some friends who were adopted from Russia as well. They have also been placed in loving families and situations that far superior to the ones that they were placed in at birth. There are over 600,000 children in Russian orphanages that now are stuck in a less than ideal setting with no way out. Vladimir Putin and the Russian government have recently made laws not allowing Americans to adopt Russian children and give them a better life here in America. The children do not have a say in where they go, and it is not fair to them that they do not have the opportunity to go somewhere better. I have started this petition in the hopes that the Russian government will see that banning adoptions in not the right way to go. Please help me in my fight to help to help Russian children have a chance at a better life.” – Joseph Andrei Hyman