Like @john65pennington said, if you go to Mexico, you see what poverty really is. Compared to that, the poorest in this country are rich. They have no government-provided housing projects. The poor live in shacks that consist of corrugated tin and dirt floors. You see fields of garbage with men, women and children standing in the middle, picking stuff up. In the US, if you give birth to a child, and have low income, you qualify for WIC (Women, Infants, Children) where you get milk, eggs, juice, etc. There is no WIC in third world countries. In the US, in the poorest cities and urban areas, if you are hungry, there are food pantries where you will be given food, or soup kitchens where you can get a meal. Not so in other countries. Yes, in the US you may have to work hard but we have a lot of rights. If you work on the books and get laid off you will get unemployment. If you work on the books when you get old you get Social Security. All children have a right to education. Many schools have breakfast and lunch programs, federally sponsored, free to children whose families qualify by low income. Everyone gets free medical care by simply walking into an ER or a health clinic. If you can’t pay, you get treated anyway. In the County I work in, they subsidize day care. The people who get it get day care $10 per day. I pay $85.
That’s part of why I think people from other countries want to come to the US. I work for local government and believe me they learn very quickly where the local Department of Social Services is and what they qualify for.