Under existing law, with the stroke of a pen, President Obama could solve the current crisis of the Central American children coming to America without visas. He could, and should, declare most or all of them to be refugees under Section 207(b) of the Immigration & Nationality Act, 8 U.S. Code Sec.1157(b).
That statute gives any president the power to determine that an "emergency refugee situation is justified by grave humanitarian concerns" and to admit a limited number of refugees per year.
We've done this before: "From December 1960 to October 1962, more than fourteen thousand Cuban youths arrived alone in the United States.