Thousands of Arkansas families have more to be thankful for this week, thanks to President Barack Obama's recent executive order to keep certain immigrants from being deported.
One estimate puts the number living in Arkansas illegally who could benefit from the president's action at least at 14,000. The number comes from Arkansas United Community Coalition, an immigrant-advocacy group.
The exact number probably isn't really knowable, not in Arkansas or in the broader United States.
But, with a controversial stroke of the pen, President Obama has arguably made the lives of maybe 5 million people who are living here illegally easier.
There are another 6 million or so who won't be protected from deportation, which is important to remember. Some of them should be deported and some probably should not be.
The reason the president did what he did is the immigration system in this country is, by all accounts, in need of a congressional fix that simply has not happened.
Give the U.S. Senate credit. More than enough of the members -- including Arkansas' Sen. Mark Pryor but excluding Sen. John Boozman -- passed a bill for sweeping changes in immigration laws in mid-2013.
Granted, that was a Democratically controlled Senate, not the Republican-led body that will be seated in January, minus Pryor and plus Republican Tom Cotton. But the 2013 bill passed 68-32, which meant it had more bipartisan support than is common these days. Fourteen Republicans joined the Senate Democrats who voted for it.
Importantly, the U.S. House has not considered the Senate bill. Nor has it offered a bill of its own.
That's the impasse that brought on Obama's post-election executive order and all the tongue-wagging about how he has overreached.
"The president is called 'Mr. President,' not 'Your Highness,'" said Boozman, one of many Republicans to come out strongly against the president's recent action.
Obama's answer to his critics: "Pass a bill."
Most likely, those critics will spend more energy fighting the president than getting their heads together to address what is a nagging problem for all of America.
The longer it takes for the Congress to send the president appropriate legislation, the wiser his executive order may seem, especially when its real impact is weighed.
There is more to it, but his order largely targets immigrants who have been in the U.S. illegally for more than five years but whose children are citizens or lawful permanent residents. Plus, only those who pass background checks and pay required fees will be able to obtain work permits under the new order.
These are people Arkansans -- indeed, all Americans -- see every day, people with whom the state's native-born and legal residents work and shop and worship. They are part of the fabric of the state and are for the most part indistinguishable from other immigrants who are documented.
Many of these people have long lived among us, raising children and paying taxes, lured like so many immigrants before them to jobs and opportunity.
Even those Pilgrims whose experiences in the New World in 1621 are remembered this week were immigrants, too.
Almost 400 years ago, they arrived on North American soil, made a place for themselves among the native population and in time helped create this nation of immigrants.
Scratch the genealogy of any American citizen and, within a few generations, there will be an immigrant in the family tree. It may even have been an immigrant who bypassed whatever the laws of the land were at the time to get here, to stay here and to thrive here.
So it is with millions of today's immigrants. They got here, stayed here and should be able to thrive now that millions of them can come out of the shadows.
BRENDA BLAGG IS A FREELANCE COLUMNIST AND LONGTIME JOURNALIST IN NORTHWEST ARKANSAS.
Commentary on 11/26/2014