We take time out later this week to celebrate a ship filled with undocumented immigrants who, upon arriving in what would one day be the United States 394 years ago, received food assistance from the existing local population.

So it was perhaps apt that a week before the anniversary of the First Feast, President Obama discussed how, in his view, immigration policy should be reformed. He used an executive order to change some aspects of immigration law, just as Presidents Bush (41 and 43), Reagan, Clinton, Nixon, Ford, Kennedy, Eisenhower, Truman, Franklin Roosevelt and Hoover did during their presidencies for reasons as varied as keeping families together to admitting refugees to bringing in wartime brides or children of U.S. service members, to bringing agricultural workers to the U. S. in time of war and the immediate postwar years.

Obama’s executive order resembles Reagan’s, who also circumvented Congress to avoid splitting families apart. It was the right and just thing to do then, and it is the right and just thing to do now.

Obama’s executive order reads very much like a Supreme Court opinion, because in large part, it was based on one — Arizona versus United States, in which not only is immigration called a federal responsibility and settled law, the discretion for enforcing it is given to the Executive branch of government.

Among the things the Obama executive order will do is to prevent the children currently on the Texas border from being deported, allow parents of U.S. citizens who have been present in the U.S. since 2010 to request deferred action and employment authorization for three years, expand waivers to include the spouses and children of citizens and permanent residents, allow those who have served in the armed forces to remain, together with their spouses and children and in some cases, parents, promote citizenship education and a path to naturalization for some, and expedited background checks and deportation for those who have broken laws other than immigration laws.

All in all, about 5 million people will be given a chance to stay in the U. S., of the 11 million or so thought to be in the country without proper documentation. Of those excluded, some will not be allowed to participate because of a criminal background, but the majority will be excluded because they don’t fall into one of the protected groups or because they have missed the time cut-off. However, only those convicted of a crime will be actively sought for deportation.

If Congress really dislikes the executive order, they have a simple remedy — pass a bill.

But instead, Obama was almost immediately sued by two states; however, in light of the 2012 Arizona opinion, those suits are likely to go nowhere. The Republicans in Congress had threatened several actions if Obama went forward with his executive order on immigration, but so far, they have not followed through on those threats, although they have finally sued him over the Affordable Care Act in recent days. If successful, that suit won’t hurt Obama, who will be well out of office by the time the suit works its way through the courts, but the millions of poor adults who use the health care subsidy to afford their insurance.

If this is what can be expected under a Republican majority in Congress, the last two years of the Obama administration will be as hamstrung as the last four years.

We hope our elected representatives understand that what we want from them isn’t more of the same gridlock, but new ideas and cooperation among the branches of government.