I think the point being made is less about international attention, and how we (as in U.S. citizens) see our own poor compared to the poor other places. The impression, which I think has some truth to it, is that often our own poor are viewed much more unfavorably than we view the poor in other places. When it's the poor across the world, they get our sympathy, but when they're in our backyard we just want them gone.

It's not about which one is the greater humanitarian problem, it's about the hypocrisy.