If your parents immigrated like mine (wife legally not allowed to work, dad on stipend) then your father (and possibly mother) was very well educated in your home country, then immigrated to the US, finished his studies or did a temporary training and then took a well paying job.
When having a $1000 a month income is known to everyone to be temporary and you know a well paying job is on the other side, that's not the kind of poor the author is talking about. When you know you will have money soon you can make all sorts of wise choices to handle a period of low liquidity. When you don't know that, you can't make any of those choices.
We definitely weren't at the very bottom of the ladder. We had some stable income, a roof over our heads and food on the table.
Looking back the financial position we were in was clearly temporary. But at the time it wasn't so clear. It wasn't obvious that once graduated, my father would be able to find a well paying job (they were also pretty ignorant on the job market at the time). We definitely had financial stress in the family, which bled out to me all through childhood.
I consider myself fortunate and I had a legs up in multiple dimensions. Educated parents, stable home life etc. But like I said, very grateful that type of stress is not a part of my life now.
If your parents immigrated like mine (wife legally not allowed to work, dad on stipend) then your father (and possibly mother) was very well educated in your home country, then immigrated to the US, finished his studies or did a temporary training and then took a well paying job.
When having a $1000 a month income is known to everyone to be temporary and you know a well paying job is on the other side, that's not the kind of poor the author is talking about. When you know you will have money soon you can make all sorts of wise choices to handle a period of low liquidity. When you don't know that, you can't make any of those choices.