WHEN I was a correspondent for The Economist in Brazil, people still occasionally used the phrase "deu no New York Times" (it was in the New York Times) to mean that something was undoubtedly true. The fallout from the Times’s story about Barack Obama’s mooted executive action on immigration reminded me of this, even though it seems a presidential directive is not quite imminent. There is talk now of delaying it until after a budget is passed in December. Yet the story's appearance in the Grey Lady substantiates suspicions that the president is seriously considering a turn borrowed from the Guy Fawkes manual for dealing with parliamentarians.



The proposed move has been described as “poisoning the well”. Mitch McConnell, the next Majority Leader of the Senate, has likened it to “waving a red flag in front of a bull''. But you don’t need a dramatic analogy to grasp that a sweeping executive action on immigration would probably lead to a government shutdown and an attempt to impeach the president. Republicans in Congress, fresh from a mid-term triumph, would immediately become apoplectic and probably say some daft things. That might make an executive order a politically clever move. Whether it would also be the right thing to do, however, is a different question—one that matters more and is far harder to answer.



Lots of rich countries are having heated debates about migration at the moment. Fears of unwashed foreigners sneaking across the border, taking jobs and stealing a treasured way of life have empowered the xenophobic, populist politics of Marine Le Pen in France, UKIP in Britain and the Northern League in Italy. The big difference in America is that the repeated failure of Congress to act on illegal immigration has ensured the size of the problem is far greater—11.5m people are now living in the country illegally, according to the Pew Research Center, a think-tank.



It is unrealistic to expect the government to deport them all. Even with deportations running at 370,000 a year (the number for fiscal year 2013), doing so would take a long time and cost a lot of money that could be better spent on other things. Carrying out the law as it is written also has a terrible human cost. As a non-citizen with an American child myself, I have no difficulty grasping that.



Reports suggest that President Obama may direct the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to leave illegal immigrants alone, so long as they have children who are citizens. There are good reasons for changing the immigration status of people who have been in the country a long time, committed no major crime (besides the original sin of being an illegal immigrant) and have American children.



There is also some precedent for presidents taking executive action in this area. Ronald Reagan deferred deportation for up to 200,000 Nicaraguans in 1987. George Bush senior spared 80,000 Chinese immigrants after the protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989, and then 190,000 Salvadoreans at the end of El Salvador’s disgusting civil war. A closer parallel to Mr Obama’s proposed order is Mr Bush’s 1990 decree that the spouses and children of people legalised under the 1986 immigration act should not be deported, which covered up to 1.5m people.



Yet the action Mr Obama may take is different in degree and in kind. It might affect 3m-5m people, and it could not be dressed up as an effort to make a previous law work better, as Mr Bush’s tweak to the 1986 law could.

There are ways in which the administration might soften the move by adding some things that Republicans want too. Reports suggest that the money saved from deporting fewer people could be spent on increasing border security. The president could also expand the number of visas available for highly skilled workers, pleasing the tech industry. He might do something to make it harder for immigrants to overstay their visas: this, rather than the lavishly funded border patrol agency, is the weakest point of the current system. It could also help if the president borrowed some language from the bipartisan immigration bill that passed the Senate last year.



But to be clear: it would still be a kidney punch. The founders did not envisage a system in which the president would go against the wishes of Congress and issue decrees that changed the lives of millions of people. Mr Obama has acknowledged as much. In November 2013 he was heckled by immigration activists while giving a speech in California. “You have the power to stop deportations,” he was told. “Actually I don’t,” was the president’s reply.



There is also the problem of timing: there has just been a national election in which the president’s party got thumped. Though some have argued that record numbers of voters stayed at home in large part because the president has seemingly avoided making big, tough decisions, such a bold executive action now would be a rebuke to democracy. It would certainly lead to a new low in relations between the executive and legislative branches at a time when most people thought they could not get any worse. It would reduce the role of Congress to something akin to a protest movement and create a terrible precedent for future presidents.



The president's options are not enviable. In “The Brothers Karamazov”, Dostoevsky asks whether it would be worth torturing an innocent child to secure happiness for the rest of mankind. The equivalent question here is this: how many parents are you prepared to separate from their children in the name of constitutional orthodoxy? Put this way, I would probably support the president. But it would be with a sense of foreboding, knowing what will likely follow.

UPDATE: The president will announce the details of his executive action on November 20th. Adopt the brace position.