McClatchy Newspapers has analyzed Census figures from 2005 and has found that "nearly 16 million Americans are living in deep or severe poverty". The number of "severely poor" (half the poverty line) rose 26% from 2000. The overall number of poor rose 17% in the same period.

And, an unknown part of that is due to the immigration policies of the Bush administration and the Democratic Party:

...Severe poverty is worst near the Mexican border and in some areas of the South, where 6.5 million severely poor residents are struggling to find work as manufacturing jobs in the textile, apparel and furniture-making industries disappear. The Midwestern Rust Belt and areas of the Northeast also have been hard hit as economic restructuring and foreign competition have forced numerous plant closings.

At the same time, low-skilled immigrants with impoverished family members are increasingly drawn to the South and Midwest to work in the meatpacking, food processing and agricultural industries.

These and other factors such as increased fluctuations in family incomes and illegal immigration have helped push 43 percent of the nation's 37 million poor people into deep poverty - the highest rate in at least 32 years.