Obama’s order has touched off a new battle, and many wonder what will happen after he leaves

From The Washington Post:

President Obama’s decision to lift the threat of deportation from nearly 4 million illegal immigrants, arguably his most aggressive use of executive power, has deeply divided the nation.

The first immigration law — the Naturalization Act of 1790 — was one that set a racist standard. It offered citizenship to any “free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years,” provided he was “a person of good character.”

So conflicted have been the country’s views on the question that in 1886, the year the Statue of Liberty was dedicated in New York Harbor to welcome your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, mobs rioted in Seattle and forced more than half the city’s 350 Chinese residents onto a ship to San Francisco.

The last overhaul of the immigration system was seeded by President Ronald Reagan, who said in a 1984 debate, “I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and who have lived here, even though some time back, they may have entered illegally.”

But that leniency, it is now widely agreed, amounted to an invitation for more to come. There were 3 million to 5 million illegal immigrants in this country when the 1986 law was passed. Now, that number is estimated at upwards of 11 million.

The unilateral action of a president — which can be undone by his successor — will not do much to settle the debate about immigration, and indeed, seems certain in the short term to inflame it.