Thugged out, If your stance against illegal immigration is purely from the prespective of shielding American worker's and as you say "What do we do about America's poverty?" well, the illegals have a very small part to pay in that equation. 1. Stop the war in Iraq and other misguided military adventures: the billions of dollars being paid to Halliburton etc could easily go towards education, food stamps, Medicare/MediCal, welfare benefits etc. There would still be plenty left over to then start a concerted job re-education program for workers who are loosing their jobs to outsourcing. 2. Stop companies like WalMart, Tyson foods etc from paying workers a minimum wage without health benefits so that the American tax payer is not forced to subsidize the cost of healthcare for the working poor of America - this would mean having renewed legislation against lobbying and special interests in Congress. With a GOP controlled house, I doubt that will happen any time soon 3. Farm laburers, meat processing industry etc need to be forced to upgrade safety sytems. I stand by what I said earlier...these jobs are not going to be bo done by Americans/ African Americans and that's not a hypothesis but rather an acknowledged fact that is increasinly comming out in the mainstream media as a consequence of this immigration bill. Maybe having better pay, health benefits, security seystems will mean having more American workers apply for those jobs.. It's a systemic, institutional policy that needs changing. Knee jerk reactions of kick the illegals out is not going to solve a damn thing...it'll only add to the alredy balloning national defecit.