President Obama is expected to act in the next few days to grant legal status to millions of illegal immigrants, fulfilling a promise he made before the election. Giving legal status to people who have lived and worked in the United States for a decade or more, paid taxes, kept out of trouble, contributed to their local economies and raised children who are American citizens is the right and moral thing to do. But the right thing to do is not necessarily legal when it means bypassing Congress — and Obama’s decision has as much to do with politics as it does morality.

A majority of Americans favor legalizing undocumented immigrants who fit the profile described above, including a majority of Republicans in most polls taken on the issue over the past decade. Nonetheless, congressional efforts to pass legislation to accomplish this have been stymied by intense lobbying from anti-immigrant groups, with help from ratings-driven conservative media who rile up segments of the Republican base to make what is a nonissue for most voters into a major issue in some recent campaigns. It is a sad state of affairs, but it is one that cannot be fixed with a stroke of the president’s pen.