Barack Obama, the US president, has announced a new immigration policy that may allow as many as 800,000 illegal immigrants to stay in the country.<br /><br />It will affect people who arrived in the US before they were 16 years old, but who aren't yet 30, and have lived in the country for five years.<br /><br />The law is not a guarantee for citizenship by any means, but it does allow undocumented immigrants to come out of the shadows for the first time in their lives.<br /><br />Rights groups have welcomed the move, but critics of the administration say the president is simply pandering to the Hispanic vote especially in key swing states in an election year.<br /><br />Al Jazeera's Anand Naidoo reports from Washington DC.
