Obama made an excellent speech, and it's great he's signing this executive order. The US should live up to its reputation as the "land of the free", and NOT deport decent people who were brought here as small children.
So, should we not imprison murderors because they have small children? We don't have to deport children born here, but the parents should be deported.
Criminal aliens will be on the fast track -- to deportation (barring that they serve prison time for due convictions should they be convicted). Persons caught illegally entering the country or overstaying their visas will of course be deported.
Did anyone catch the fact that families are to be kept together? What can the American-born US citizen kids of illegal aliens do without their parents? They would be illegal aliens in the countries to which their parents are deported.
The President has put humanitarian concerns over the sort of revenge that some on the Right want. Face it -- Ronald Reagan and George H W Bush facilitated the immigration of Cubans and southeast Asians whom most people expected to be reliable voters for the Republican Party indefinitely. Such was humane in its time; so it is with President Obama.
Sure, it has consequences. It can only hurt Republicans in 2016 -- tough luck. If it was right when Reagan was President, then so it is with Obama.