Reader Roger Chaillet sent in a link to this story, which quotes Peter Edelman, [Email him]director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy:

"He pointed to the recent recession but also longer-term changes in the economy such as globalization, automation, outsourcing, immigration, and less unionization that have pushed median household income lower."[US poverty on track to rise to highest since 1960s, By Hope Yen, Associated Press July 22, 2012]

I've emphasized immigration because it's usually unmentioned and unmentionable in the context of poverty. Immigration increases poverty in America two different ways. 

1. It imports poor people. Specifically, that part of the population of Mexico that is poor and unskilled. 
2. It makes Americans poorer, because they're competing with the poor of Mexico for jobs.

One of the women featured in the AP article is  a white American woman who is "living on disability, with an infant daughter and a boyfriend, Garrett Goudeseune, 25, who can't find work as a landscaper. "

I'm not surprised that a white landscaper can't find work. This is exactly the kind of person who would be helped by an immigration moratorium.