A feeling of hopelessness
I would first refer you to menege144 in the comments section.
While I commend Riker, the director, for using non-professionals and examining real life situations, the overall feeling you receive from this film is hopeless struggle. The immigrant experience today (and I live in the NY metro area and have intimate knowledge of these things) is much struggle and much joy, along with tragedy and setback. Even the happy young man at the party is given a bleak fate at the end of his segment.
The black and white photography, while appreciated and well done, had echos of early 60's real life dramas. (I'm thinking especially of "Nothing But A Man.") The lighting was deliberately angled, as well, to give extra dramatic enhancement to certain scenes, such as the new immigrant and the girl he meets at the party, and the garment factory room. Many times we were looking at pictures, not a movie. A focused political statement was being communicated. Look at these victims, the movie sobs. On top of it all, the maudlin orchestral background music made me feel like I was in a holocaust movie. Everyone was doomed, condemned by Nazi-like bosses and bureaucrats. What a statement about supposedly hard-hearted New York! What about the places these people came from. Guess what . . . they're worse. I have seen home movies from people like the ones in this movie. Poverty is what they're escaping.
Real life is not so black and white. There is community. (It was not a coincidence that the two young people were from the same city.) There is family, blood-ties or no. There is self-help. There are many organizations (as portrayed in the movie). And there are helpful non-immigrant individuals. Yes, exploitation happens in real life (i.e., in New York and elsewhere). But that's only a part of it, unlike this partially true portrait.
If so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love.
~ Tolstoy