Highly recommended read.  For a powerful description of the intense political battle being waged in Washington, DC over immigration reform, see the Nov. 7 front-page Wall Street Journal article by Carol E. Lee and Peter Nicholas, Face-Off Over Immigration.  (Copyright 2014, WSJ – Nov. 7, 2014)

With this week’s significant Republican gains in Congress, which include shifts in chairmanships and rule-making power, the 2015 Congress may finally produce reform legislation that President Obama would not veto – likely piecemeal legislation, but nonetheless, progress might be made on updating wide provisions of an outdated U.S. immigration system that address lawful immigration.

Yet based on the tone and scope of disagreement by the principles related to illegal immigration (dramatically depicted in this article), concerning the need for legislation that looks back to address the millions already here, as well as forward, it becomes difficult to see how the legislative effort would succeed if, within the remaining lame duck Congress, President Obama acts unilaterally using so called executive action to grant provisional protected status to a wide pool of presently illegal immigrants, as he has promised to do.  (See Wikipedia explanation of Executive Orders here, including how past American presidents have wielded this unilateral authority without congressional backlash.)