The president’s eloquence regarding our nation of immigrants.

President Obama should go ahead and issue executive orders providing protection to millions of undocumented individuals by year’s end, as he is expected to do.

First, because the moral case for doing so is exceptionally strong.

This protection would not be granted to people who just jumped over the border fence. It would apply to people who have been in this country for years and years: They are our friends and neighbors, who have worked beside us and for us, and whose children go to school alongside ours.

These people are, in some real sense, no longer undocumented immigrants; they are undocumented Americans. They do not deserve to live in constant fear that their lives will be uprooted and their families torn apart.

And second, the political case for protecting immigrants is also powerful, since Republicans in Congress time and time again have refused to take action on this issue.

This lack of action on the part of Congress has been disturbing and disappointing. It has forced millions of people to continue to live in fear and in the shadows.

Obama’s own record on immigration has been spotty at best. In fact, he has deported more immigrants than any president before him. But he began to see the light two years ago when he granted protection to the “Dreamers,” the children who came over here when they were very young.

Now he wants to expand on that, and conservatives are attacking him on two grounds.

They constantly cite the need to “secure the border” before they will consider enacting reforms to benefit those already here. But Congress has already poured billions into securing the border since 9/11.

The other criticism that conservatives make is the charge that Obama is acting illegally. They are focusing on his past opinions about the feasibility and constitutionality of reform and his prior hesitance to grant protection to millions of immigrants.

Rather than viewing this as sinister, a more generous explanation is that it shows he has an open mind and an open heart.

Those are good qualities to have in a president—and in any moral human being.