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At times in the past, the U.S. did not restrict the number of immigrants.

I know from the stories of my grandparents and great-grandparents the real struggles and discrimination that Italian Americans faced when they first immigrated to America.

I couldn't settle in Italy - it was like living in a foreign country.

I'm very proud of being Italian-American, but people don't realize that the mafia is just this aberration. The real community is built on the working man, the guy who's the cop, the fireman, the truck driver, the bus driver.

Most Italians who came to this country are very patriotic. There was this exciting possibility that if you worked real hard, and you loved something, you could become successful.

My father's best friend, Georgie Terra, was an Italian guy. The children and the cousins and nieces and nephews were children of the Mafia. Those were the children he grew up with. If you want to go to a safe neighborhood, go to where the Mafia is.

The Mafia is a question every time an Italian raises his head.

Migrants don't come to the United States because, as Ambassador Aponte argued in her press conference, of 'lies' told by smugglers that, once here, you can't get deported. They come because their countries have been destroyed by U.S. policy.

My own grandparents came to the United States as immigrants in 1912, and they lived for some years in Italian ghettos in New York. Most immigrant groups start in ghettos somewhere, and many of them never get out.