On Monday, lightweight presidential contender John Edwards will be starting a "Road to One America" tour to begin in New Orleans and end in Kentucky three days and eight states later. The supposed goal will be to highlight the apparent fact that 10% of Americans live in poverty; in actual fact the tour will be just as fake as Edwards himself. I am absolutely certain that he will not only not mention illegal immigration's role in increasing poverty in the U.S., he will take steps to support even more illegal immigration.

In New Orleans' Ninth Ward I fully expect one of two things to happen:

1. He will highlight poor "Hispanics" working there without disclosing that they're here illegally, or even support them continuing to work there despite their status and despite the fact that they are indeed taking jobs that Americans should be doing - and should be doing under safer conditions.

2. Or, he will ignore that fact that Bush, the Democrats, and the media helped in the Bush plan to move the former residents of New Orleans to other cities, while moving illegal aliens from Mexico in. This is an issue I've been complaining about for almost two years, and it's surprising how little attention it's received. While Ray Nagin, Mary Landrieu, and Kathleen Blanco complained initially, they were soon silenced by the national establishment. In some cases, even those opposed to illegal immigration - those supposedly on our side - helped the Bush/Dem/MSM cause by making a big deal about a comment Nagin made.

Edwards will also avoid pointing out that Democrats like him were basically in charge of New Orleans before Katrina and could have mitigated poverty there. Instead, their primary concern was getting NO's residents to vote for them.

UPDATE: From time . com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1644425,00.html:

It isn't until we arrived in the Mississippi Delta town of Canton and settle into the Greater Mt. Levi Full Gospel Baptist Church that the poverty tour slowed down enough to actually hear from some impoverished people. The church is across the street from Peco Poultry, a vast chicken-processing factory, and we met a group of ten poultry workers, most of them Hispanic, who described the struggle that is their lives. They live in a trailer park beside the plant, as many as 10 or 12 of them stuffed into a single trailer with two beds.

I don't know the status of those workers because so-called reporter Eric Pooley doesn't disclose that. However, I very strongly suspect that that part of the tour falls under #1 above.