James Pieratt

When they wrote home, they may have embellished a little.

Maybe you would skip telling your family and friends about loneliness and exploitation and instead you decided to be a positive person and you focus on hopes and whatever small success, real or imagined, there may have been for you in US.

Maybe your cousin wrote from New York saying that there was work on the docks or maybe a brother sent money from Louisiana after harvesting sugarcane.

And this got a few folks back home thinking, you know what? Things seem to be working out for them.

Later in the movie, the senator, after being appropriately blackmailed, declares For many years, many of my constituents have been of Italian descent.

I've come to know them well.

They have honored me with their support and their friendship.

I can proudly say that some of my very best friends are Italian-Americans." I can state from my own knowledge and experience that Italian Americans are among the most loyal, most low-abiding, patriotic, hard-working American citizens in this land.