"On the road yesterday with my fiance, I ventured that domestic poverty needs an appealing iconic image.  He offered the migrant mother - taken by immigration, I responded.  Homelessness is its own category; children offer represent hunger, child abuse or neglect, or the failure of public education.  Or child poverty as its own issue area.   Poor men are often memorialized as white homeless men, perhaps with mental illness or substance abuse problems, or as African-American criminals.  Thanks to Reagan and the rest, all we're left with is the "welfare queen."  Native American poverty is virtually invisible to the public eye, and the current economic crisis has disappeared the working poor, who, in their employee uniforms waiting for the bus, were the emerging image of domestic poverty in the 21st century."

This paragraph of yours nailed it.  We, speaking as a societal generalizations, have allowed poverty to be spoken about in terms of many compartmentalized smaller issues - many of which lay blame at the foot of the one in poverty rather than forcing us to deal with the poverty and related issues like homelessness and necessary medical care.

Native Americans are often in poverty because there simply aren't any jobs on (or even near) their Reservations that pay enough and work enough hours to get one out of poverty and what jobs do exist are often filled through crooked means like nepotism.  When a realistic unemployment rate for your Reservation is 25% or so, it's not like poverty is unexpected - and it's not like the situation can be called unexpected when the Nations generally have to get Federal approval for anything that would result in employment.

Homelessness exists, but to be fair, it's as much women as men.  However, yes, that our nation never produced the easily accessible outpatient mental health clinics promised long ago when the institutions were closed and that what clinics do exist have (in many cases) quality problems that often approach "shouldn't see live patients" is more fairly stated as why any homeless who are mentally ill aren't receiving treatment.  You can't get treatment if appropriate, competent, professional treatment simply doesn't exist or isn't accessible.  And you can't get well enough to do things like hold down a job that you need to get housing if that treatment doesn't exist, now can you?  How is that the fault of someone who's mentally ill?  I have the advantage of (mostly) avoiding true homelessness and of having some sort of what-passes-for-insurance and it STILL took me FIVE YEARS and I lost count of how many doctors to get decent treatment, to not have my rights violated (meaning the doctors weren't just treating me rudely but not violating the various applicable laws), and to get correct diagnoses and working treatment. I can't imagine what it must be like for someone who's having to navigate the "system" with a lower level of awareness and/or having to start by getting "what-passes-for-insurance" just to have access.

We've compartmentalized immigration into an issue of its own which many have overshadowed by the issue of and clamor about "illegal immigration" and what to do about that.  Never mind these are still humans with basic needs and basic rights.

Too many of our nation have a "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" mentality, which tells the working poor that it's their own fault for not insisting on getting a better job.  How is it the worker's fault that employers underpay, violate or push the limits and intentions of labor laws, find ways not to offer benefits (or to make the offer legal but pointless) or that our nation continues to have a very unrealistic set of ideas about what constitutes poverty and thus need for assistance?

The welfare queen, well, it's palatable (at least to some) to think that welfare fraud is rampant and that, thus, welfare isn't necessary.  A lot of the fraud isn't even with the individuals, it's with stuff like providers, stores, etc.  Most of what does exist with individuals could be caught by a couple of minor rule changes (if done CAREFULLY - like by clarifying household rules and the rules about parenthood and living with the other parent) and by better audits.  Of course this requires hiring competent people to the welfare departments and based on personal experience, this might be a pipe dream.

As to global vs. domestic poverty, I suspect it and the welvare queen share a similar root - it's much easier to pretend WE don't have poverty (with a possible exception of a few who've "chosen" poverty as a "lifestyle" or "because they like the benefits") than it is to ADMIT it's all around us and that it strikes rather randomly.  After all, many of us in poverty did do a lot of the "right things" that are "supposed to prevent poverty". So if we help global poverty we're doing something - and something trendy to boot - but still allowing our chosen ignorance to survive.

Oh, and there's another good book about the working poor.  Ever read Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America? The author is Barbara Ehrenreich.