President Obama ceremoniously pardons a turkey the day before Thanksgiving last year. Larry Downing / Reuters When President Obama announced an executive action last November to protect millions of immigrants from deportation, his East Room pitch was framed as an appeal to the commonality of American heritage. “Whether our forebears were strangers who crossed the Atlantic, or the Pacific, or the Rio Grande, we are here only because this country welcomed them in and taught them that to be an American is about something more than what we look like, or what our last names are, or how we worship,” Obama said.