I don’t know enough about immigration law to make an informed decision, but I suspect most legislators never contemplated a president who would use emergency and/or discretion clauses to such an extent. So maybe immigration law does give the president the authority to amnesty hard immigration cases. The people who wrote that probably did not imagine a president like Obama would come along and use every conceivable loophole for political purposes.
That said, I know the difference between following the spirit of a law and the law itself. Legalists love to do the same thing with scripture. If Christ didn’t specifically state, “For the record, I oppose abortion,” then legalists can (and DO!) say Christ is OK with abortion. But we know immigration law was never intended to permit this, and even if it’s legally OK, we aren’t dummies. We know Congress has been try to reach a democratic compromise on this. They would have certainly passed something had there been a true mandate from We the People to do so.
I guess the emperor grew impatient when he wasn’t playing golf.
It's an election year and Obama detected this Republican fault line and decided to use it against them. Like Birth Control mandate I expect Republicans will stop talking about this very soon, Just the customary ‘woof woof’