Democrats hailed President Obama's move Thursday to halt deportations for millions of immigrants living in the country illegally. 
 
 But the lawmakers were quick to frame the executive actions as merely the first step on a much longer path toward overhauling the immigration system, a move they say only Congress can take. 
 
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 "It's bold, it's courageous, it's as good as it can be under the law," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). "But that doesn't mean we wouldn't like to have a bill, and some of the provisions will have to take a little time to be implemented," she quickly added. "So there's plenty of time for the Republicans — in fact even two weeks when we come back [in December] — to pass an immigration bill." 
 
 A wave of Democrats issued statements Thursday night echoing that message. 
 
 Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.), the incoming head of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said Obama's action is "a bold step in the right direction" but "not a permanent solution." Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) said the changes mark "a turning point for the nation" but "are not all-encompassing." And Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.), Capitol Hill's most vocal proponent of an immigration overhaul, praised Obama's "courage" but quickly emphasized the need for a more permanent fix. 
 
 "We all must recognize that no executive action is a substitute for legislation," he said, "so the fundamental challenge of getting legislation through the Republican-controlled House remains the same." 
 
 The Democrats' strategy is clear: As much as they're welcoming Obama's actions with open arms, they also don't want it to become an impediment — political or otherwise — to Congress's efforts to enact a more permanent comprehensive reform law over the next two years. 
 
 The Senate had passed such a reform bill in June 2013 with broad bipartisan support, but House Republican leaders refused to consider it. Obama said his announcement this week is simply designed to help keep families together in the face of that congressional inaction, and he urged Congress to take the steps that would make his unilateral moves dispensable. 
 
 "The day I sign that bill into law, the actions I take will no longer be necessary," Obama said during Thursday's speech. 
 
 Such statements, however, have done nothing to appease Republicans, who are furious with what they consider an unconstitutional power grab by a president they say has habitually abused his executive power. 
 
 Scores of Republicans issued statements Thursday night suggesting that Obama, by his action, just made it harder for lawmakers to reach a deal on broader reforms. 
 
 "By ignoring the will of the American people, President Obama has cemented his legacy of lawlessness and squandered what little credibility he had left," Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said in a statement. "His ‘my way or the highway’ approach makes it harder to build the trust with the American people that is necessary to get things done on behalf of the country." 
 
 Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), a former federal prosecutor, said Democrats' argument that past presidents have taken similar actions simply doesn't fly with GOP lawmakers. 
 
 "Attempts to undermine the law via executive fiat, regardless of motivation, are dangerous," Gowdy said in a statement. "Whether previous administrations acted outside of constitutional boundaries is not license to do the same." 
 
 Democrats, for their part, reject the notion that Obama's actions reduce the odds that Congress can pass legislation. They're quick to note that Boehner and the Republicans had the entirety of the 113th Congress to consider a bill before Obama acted Thursday but declined to do so. 
 
 "They are trying to poison the well by saying the president shouldn't do this," Pelosi said. 
 
 "But the fact is that I think many of our [Republican] colleagues here understand that we have to do this." ||||| Ahead of President Obama's prime-time address announcing his plans to take executive action on immigration policy, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) released this message saying Obama actions are not "how our democracy works." (YouTube/John Boehner) 
 
 Ahead of President Obama's prime-time address announcing his plans to take executive action on immigration policy, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) released this message saying Obama actions are not "how our democracy works." (YouTube/John Boehner) 
 
 Just two weeks ago, Republicans handed President Obama a humiliating defeat at the polls, winning full control of Congress. But already, party leaders fear that the conservative uproar over the president’s immigration actions will doom any hopes for a stable period of GOP governance. 
 
 The moves announced Thursday night by Obama — which will protect millions of illegal immigrants from deportation — have sparked an immediate and widening rebellion among tea party lawmakers that top Republicans are struggling to contain. 
 
 Despite expanded powers and some new titles, soon-to-be Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) remain sharply limited in their ability to persuade their most conservative members. The duo has been thrust back into the same cycle of intraparty warfare that has largely defined the GOP during the Obama years and that has hurt the party’s brand among the broader electorate. 
 
 “It is the first real challenge for Boehner and McConnell together,” said Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), a Boehner ally. “They’d like to wipe the slate clean for when they start up next year, with this situation behind us.” 
 
 In his prime-time speech from the East Room of the White House, Obama blamed Republicans for forcing his hand by refusing to approve immigration reform and told them, “Pass a bill.” He also cast the issue in moral terms, quoting Scripture to bolster his case. 
 
 During his speech on immigration reform, President Obama called on illegal immigrants to "come out of the shadows" and "get right with the law." (AP) 
 
 But comprehensive immigration reform is unlikely to pass a Republican-held Congress, because of partisan hostilities in Washington. Still, GOP leaders badly want to show the country that the party can govern constructively, even if it is not clear whether they can keep their raucous conference united. 
 
 McConnell and Boehner, for example, want to approve a long-term spending bill at least through the early part of next year — part of an effort to limit theatrical confrontations with Obama and focus on tax reform and other Republican-friendly issues. 
 
 But conservatives inside and outside Congress want to use the budget process as a battleground to wage war against Obama and his immigration program. The proposed gambit raises the specter of another government shutdown, akin to the one that damaged Republicans last year. 
 
 The debate is also a test of whether the party can contain the controversial and sometimes offensive comments that have often hindered attempts to bolster support for Republicans among Hispanics. After tea party firebrand Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) said on Wednesday that protected immigrants would become “illiterate” voters, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) winced. 
 
 “Unfortunate, unfair, unnecessary, unwise,” said Graham, who is close to party leaders. 
 
 Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), a moderate from the Philadelphia exurbs, said the leadership is asking his colleagues to “not play into the president’s hands.” 
 
 “The president wants to see an angry and intemperate response, thinking the Republicans will do something that leads to a shutdown,” Dent said. “Don’t take the bait, and don’t have a hysterical reaction. We can be strong, rational and measured.” 
 
 Republican leaders are considering several moves they say would be forceful responses to the president while also keeping the government funded. Ideas being floated include filing a lawsuit over Obama’s executive authority, pursuing stand-alone legislation on immigration policy and removing funding for immigration agencies. 
 
 Another option — funding the government until the end of the fiscal year and then rescinding parts of immigration-related funding — is favored by the leadership and championed by House Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers (R-Ky.). His office has issued a memo urging members to avoid using government funding as the means of dissent and warning that some immigration agencies would not be affected since they operate on user fees. 
 
 “We are considering a variety of options,” McConnell said Thursday in a floor speech. He suggested that his preference would be for Republicans to avoid becoming mired in a fiscal clash during the lame-duck session, shortly before the GOP takes control of the Senate in January. 
 
 Many conservative lawmakers, however, are shrugging off pleas from leadership. Furious with the president, they are planning a series of immediate and hard-line actions that could have sweeping consequences. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said Wednesday that Obama’s executive action should be met with a refusal to vote on any more of his nominees, and on Thursday, he compared the action with the ancient Catiline conspiracy, a plot to overthrow the Roman Republic. 
 
 Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), likely the next chairman of the budget committee, has advocated for a series of stopgap spending bills with the intent of pressuring the president to relent. Sessions is the featured speaker at a Heritage Foundation event Friday morning in response to Obama’s moves, a couple of hours after a scheduled Boehner news conference. 
 
 And Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) — one of the loudest voices on the right — has hinted at bringing up impeachment measures. “We have constitutional authority to do a string of things. [Impeachment] would be the very last option, but I would not rule it out,” King said Thursday on CNN. 
 
 Amid the chatter over strategy, it is the tone of outraged rank-and-file members that most worries GOP elders. Ahead of the 2016 presidential election, they do not want to see Republicans tagged by Democrats as hostile toward Latinos and other minorities. 
 
 “It only takes a couple” of comments for an unflattering narrative to build about the Republican response, said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). “That’s the trouble with having some of these new, young punks around here. They ought to listen to us old geezers.” 
 
 In the House, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), who has been a prominent backer of comprehensive immigration reform, has been counseling House Republicans about the need to show empathy for undocumented workers as the party rails against the Obama administration, according to GOP aides familiar with his deliberations. 
 
 Yet the firestorms have continued to flare, with some Republicans, encouraged by grass-roots activists and conservative media personalities, eschewing the party’s more incremental line and making contentious statements. 
 
 Speaking with reporters, Bachmann had said the “social cost” of Obama’s immigration policies would be extensive, with “millions of unskilled, illiterate, foreign nationals coming into the United States who can’t speak the English language.” 
 
 When pressed on why she used the term “illiterate,” Bachmann said, “I’m not using a pejorative term against people who are non-American citizens. I’m only repeating what I heard from Hispanic Americans down at the border.” 
 
 On Friday, Bachmann and Steve King plan to travel to the U.S.-Mexico border to meet with officials to showcase their opposition to the president and cast themselves as leading Republican voices. 
 
 Other Republicans have called for a proactive legislative response beginning early next year, rallying behind a strategy that would take away government funding as the main battleground and turning toward specific policy areas. 
 
 Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a potential presidential candidate, said Republicans must signal that in spite of their disagreements with the president, they are committed to reform. “This country needs to deal with immigration,” he said in an interview. ||||| Immigration Mitch McConnell promises forceful immigration response The GOP leader did not specify what action his Republican Senate will take next year. 
 
 Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised on Thursday morning that Congress will respond forcefully in 2015 to President Barack Obama’s imminent executive action that will defer deportation for millions of undocumented immigrants. 
 
 In a blistering speech that quoted Obama’s past statements about his limited unilateral powers on the subject of immigration, the GOP leader did not specify what action that his Republican Senate will take next year, whether it be zeroing out funding for government agencies in a spending bill, taking the White House to court or taking a confrontational stance to the president’s nominees, as suggested by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). 
 
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 But the Kentucky senator vowed there will be a forceful response from Capitol Hill once his newly minted GOP majority takes over next year. 
 
 (Also on POLITICO: Obama to shield 5 million from deportation) 
 
 “He needs to understand something. If President Obama acts in defiance of the people and imposes his will on the country, Congress will act,” McConnell said ahead of a long Thanksgiving recess that begins Friday. “We’re considering a variety of options. But make no mistake. When the newly elected representatives of the people take their seats, they will act.” 
 
 McConnell’s remarks also serve to underscore his and other Republican leaders’ effort to avoid any whiff of the threat of a government shutdown when funding runs dry on Dec. 11. Instead, top Republicans are urging measured responses from their rank-and-file, hoping to avoid impeachment and shutdown talk as they mull how precisely they will respond to Obama’s actions and balance the demands of conservative Republicans agitating for a fiery confrontation. 
 
 “My belief is you can’t capitulate, but you need to push back smartly,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). “If you overreact, it becomes about us, not about President Obama.” 
 
 (Video: President Obama's full immigration address) 
 
 And by planning a response to the White House in 2015, McConnell also would accrue significantly more sway over Capitol Hill’s direction. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) still controls the floor until January — and both he and Republican leaders have said that in the current divided Congress they are essentially confined to considering whatever House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) can muscle through his chamber to keep the government funded. ||||| Thousands of immigrant-rights activists, families and elected officials cheered across the country as President Barack Obama announced on television his plan for relief from deportations for about 5 million people. 
 
 Miriam Lopez,left, Faby Jacome and Dulce Saavedra console each other as they are brought to tears while watching President Obama's speech on executive action on immigration outside the Los Angeles Metropolitan... (Associated Press) 
 
 Ana Patino, right, of Phoenix, kisses the hand of her daughter, Natalie Cruz, 5, as Ana's husband and the girl's father, Rafael Cruz, left, sits with Camila Cruz, during a watch party for President Obama's... (Associated Press) 
 
 Near a makeshift memorial for immigrants, Christina Felix joins other immigrant rights supporters gathering at the Arizona Capitol to listen to President Barack Obama announce a new program to protect... (Associated Press) 
 
 Isela Segovia hugs her two children Nivia, 7, bottom, and Elian, 6, while watching President Obama's speech as it is televised Thursday, Nov. 20, 2014, in Houston. Obama’s sweeping changes to the U.S.... (Associated Press) 
 
 Andrea Miller, director of the Oregon immigrant-rights group Causa, talks about the speech given by President Barack Obama outlining plans for relief from deportation for up to 5 million immigrants, in... (Associated Press) 
 
 Oregonians watch President Obama's announcement about immigration relief at the Center for Intercultural Organizing in Portland, Ore., Thursday, Nov. 20, 2014. Tens of thousands of immigrants who lack... (Associated Press) 
 
 From left, Viridiana Carrizales of San Antonio, Texas, Jose Patino, of Phoenix, and his girlfriend Reyna Montoya of Mesa, react during a watch party for President Obama's speech on immigration at the... (Associated Press) 
 
 But after the initial burst of emotion Thursday evening at hastily organized watch parties and in living rooms, many said Obama's plan was just the first step in the fight for comprehensive immigration reform. Immigrant families pointed out the plan would only cover about 5 million of the 11 million without legal status, leaving many families and individuals in limbo. 
 
 Republicans slammed the president's action as an overreach, while advocates — including Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber and California Gov. Jerry Brown — praised Obama's plan. 
 
 Not everyone was happy with Obama's action. A couple of protesters held "no amnesty" signs outside a New York union office where advocates of the president's plan watched the speech. 
 
 A snapshot of reactions across the country: 
 
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 "This will definitely help our family no longer live in fear, fear that we will have to drop everything if our parents are deported. But there is still fear, because this is a temporary, and we need something permanent," said Isaura Pena, 20, of Portland whose father and mother lack legal status. 
 
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 "This is a great day for farmworkers. It's been worth the pain and sacrifice," said Jesus Zuniga, 40, who picks tomatoes in California's Central Valley and watched the speech at a union gathering in Fresno. 
 
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 "Simply stated, you're the only singular person in this entire country that can advance or adopt meaningful immigration reform. By that very definition then, it is your singular failure alone as to why we do not yet have reform, why America continues to be at risk, and new crimes and new victims are mounting each and every day in every single state," said Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones, addressing the president directly in a video posted by his office Wednesday on YouTube. Jones vowed to crusade against illegal immigration after the shooting rampage last month by a Mexican man with a long criminal history who was in the country illegally. 
 
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 "They're going to have a chance to be what they want to be and get an education," said Maria Perez, 41, of Fresno, California. She is documented, but she often worries about her nieces, ages 16 and 18, who aren't. With the president's speech, she feels hope that her nieces now can achieve her dreams. 
 
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 "I believe that is a good step forward, but again I look at the other side and I believe he is maybe acting too rash. I don't know why he is doing it without the consent of Congress. ... I think that is creating too much dissention in Congress where it is already, and I don't know if that is necessarily a good thing. I think for a lot of people — especially those who are here undocumented — it is great, but at some point we have to draw the line," said community activist Bob Hernandez of Wichita, Kansas. 
 
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 "I don't think it helps because it's going to create friction with the new Congress that's Republican. While I think it's probably the wrong thing for him to do, there's a possibility it starts a dialogue and pushes the Republicans to move more quickly," Overstock.com board chairman Jonathan Johnson said at his company's Salt Lake City, Utah, headquarters. 
 
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 "I am a mother of DREAMERS (the children who benefited from Obama's Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals program.) They are not citizens. It was a great disappointment to hear I won't benefit from it. It's bland. He gave us a little taste but it had no taste," said Rosa Mejia, an undocumented immigrant in El Paso, Texas, who has been living in the US since 1999. 
 
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 Abel Rodriguez, of Phoenix, said Obama's proposal could mean that he and his wife would be able to visit their family in Mexico without fear of not being able to return to the U.S. or getting separated from their daughters. "I have not seen my family for 10 years. I have two grandsons that I don't see," Rodriguez said. 
 
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 "We have a lot of unemployed Americans right now, and I don't understand why unemployed Americans can't be hired to do the jobs these illegals are doing," said John Wilson, who works in contract management in New York City. 
 
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 "This is not a partisan issue. When the bluest of blue states — like Oregon, for example — vote overwhelmingly to prohibit illegal aliens from obtaining drivers licenses, it speaks volumes about the widespread lack of support for President Obama's immigration policies. The American people have spoken, and time and again they have been ignored," said Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer.
– President Obama unveiled sweeping actions on immigration reform last night, and while the civil unrest Sen. Tom Coburn warned of hasn't materialized, it's safe to say congressional Republicans are deeply unhappy. Obama criticized Republicans for failing to act and dared them to "pass a bill," but the forceful actions GOP congressional leaders have promised in response are not expected to include immigration reform. More: Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised a tough response when the GOP majority takes office next year, but he didn't spell out any specific actions, Politico reports. Obama needs to understand that if he "acts in defiance of the people and imposes his will on the country, Congress will act," McConnell says. "We're considering a variety of options. But make no mistake. When the newly elected representatives of the people take their seats, they will act." Possible actions include a lawsuit against the White House or choking off funding to federal agencies. House Speaker John Boehner was among many Republicans who warned that Obama's order will make it tougher to reach compromise on other reforms. "By ignoring the will of the American people, President Obama has cemented his legacy of lawlessness and squandered what little credibility he had left," Boehner said in a statement. "His 'my way or the highway' approach makes it harder to build the trust with the American people that is necessary to get things done on behalf of the country." The immigration order not only sets the GOP against Obama, it raises the prospect of yet more intra-GOP conflict, with some conservatives demanding a government shutdown, reports the Washington Post. "The president wants to see an angry and intemperate response, thinking the Republicans will do something that leads to a shutdown," says Rep. Charlie Dent from Pennsylvania. "Don't take the bait, and don't have a hysterical reaction. We can be strong, rational, and measured." Democrats were broadly in support of the move to defer deportation for millions, but many called it just the first step in a process that should be completed by Congress, the Hill reports. The move is "a bold step in the right direction" but "not a permanent solution," says Democratic Rep. Linda Sanchez, the new head of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Among those affected by the move, there is some joy and relief, but some feel it didn't go far enough and hope for a longer-term solution, the AP finds. "This will definitely help our family no longer live in fear, fear that we will have to drop everything if our parents are deported," says a 20-year-old woman in Portland whose parents lack legal status. "But there is still fear, because this is ... temporary, and we need something permanent."