US President Barack Obama is reportedly going to use his executive authority to bypass the gridlocked congress and enact major changes to America’s immigration system – changes that could protect as many as five million undocumented immigrants from the threat of deportation and provide many of them with work permits.

White House officials are not confirming the reports before the official announcement as early as next week, when Mr. Obama returns to Washington from the G20 conference in Brisbane.

Published reports say that a key piece of the order will allow many parents of children who are American citizens or legal residents to obtain legal work documents and no longer worry about being discovered, separated from their families and sent away.  That part alone could affect as many 3.3 million people, and addresses one of the chief concerns of immigration activists.  The White House is still debating whether to include protections for hundreds of thousands of farm workers who have entered the country illegally but have been employed for years in the agriculture industry. 

Needless to say, Obama’s republican critics are absolutely apoplectic over this.  The plan is based on longstanding legal precedents that give sitting Presidents the right to exercise “prosecutorial discretion” in how it enforces existing laws.  The republicans are considering a lawsuit challenging these precedents, the very ones they supported when republicans were in the White House.