The Times reports on the details of the executive action President Obama is considering to give effectively legal status to millions of illegal aliens, and says it may happen as early as next week (emphasis added, casual bias in the original):

President Obama will ignore angry protests from Republicans and announce as soon as next week a broad overhaul of the nation’s immigration enforcement system that will protect up to five million undocumented immigrants from the threat of deportation and provide many of them with work permits, according to administration officials who have direct knowledge of the plan.
Asserting his authority as president to enforce the nation’s laws with discretion, Mr. Obama intends to order changes that will significantly refocus the activities of the government’s 12,000 immigration agents. One key piece of the order, officials said, will allow many parents of children who are American citizens or legal residents to obtain legal work documents and no longer worry about being discovered, separated from their families and sent away.
That part of Mr. Obama’s plan alone could affect as many as 3.3 million people who have been living in the United States illegally for at least five years, according to an analysis by the Migration Policy Institute, an immigration research organization in Washington. But the White House is also considering a stricter policy that would limit the benefits to people who have lived in the country for at least 10 years, or about 2.5 million people.
Extending protections to more undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children, and to their parents, could affect an additional one million or more if they are included in the final plan that the president announces.

The broad version of this plan is roughly similar in size and intent to the proposal Fox News reported last night, which Mark commented on below. The two reports also share a number of other ancillary measures: ending the Secure Communities program, which checks the immigration status of criminal suspects, and more visas for high-skilled immigrants. Both of those things are, of course, immigration-policy changes too, but closer to the kinds of policy changes past presidents have used their discretion on. The only precedent for giving effective legal status and work authorization to any very large number of illegal immigrants is . . . what the president did two years ago.

There was some hope that the president might go through with a big change to immigration-enforcement priorities, but without giving deferred-action status — effective legalization — to millions of illegal immigrants. It appears he’s planning to go big, for now.