Immigration reform has been a controversial issue for decades and as expected, Friday's announcement has its supporters and critics.
President Obama's policy means law-abiding illegal immigrants who are successful students or those with military service cannot be deported, as long as they are under 30, and came to the United States before age 16.
Giovana Armendariz is a junior at the University of Nevada and hopes to work in wildlife management, once she gets her degree. But she is not an American citizen. Her parents brought her to the United States, from Mexico, when she was nine years old.
"I do call myself Mexican, but at the same time, it's not my country anymore," Armendariz said.
She is one of about 800,000 people who have faced the possibility of deportation, since coming here. But not anymore.
"I was brought here when I was very young and I have a chance to go to a university, to have a driver's license, to walk outside my door without the fear of being deported," Armendariz said.
"This is a two-year relief," Community Organizer Claudia Castaneda-Melendez said. "It is not granting anyone citizenship. It is not an amnesty. It is not an immigration reform and it doesn't substitute the DREAM Act."
The DREAM Act was a bill that does many of these same things but it did not pass Congress. That has many saying the president is overstepping his bounds.
"He's demonstrated his lack of ability to work with Congress," Chairman of the Washoe County Republican Party Dave Buell said. "He just thinks he can go over their head and start making laws on himself and we know that that's not what the Constitution says."
It also raises questions of what the president's motives are as he runs for re-election. Especially in battleground states, like Nevada, that have a high Latino population. Also coming on the heels of last year's record number of deportations.
"You go from one extreme to 'Let's deport everybody to the other extreme. Let's give everybody amnesty,'" Buell said. "Neither one of those are the right answer. There's something in between that we can talk about."
"The fact of seeing so many of our youth, our DREAMers not having to be in the shadows no more, to be able to freely go outside without fear," Castaneda-Melendez said. "I think that's the reward, regardless if it's a campaign effort or not."
People like Armendariz, who only know America as their home.
"Everything we know, everything we believe in, would be left behind if we left the United States," Armendariz said.
