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Immigration activists hold banners during a rally calling for immigration reform at Lafayette Square on November 3, 2014 in Washington, DC. MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

With the 2014 midterm elections out of the way, President Obama is preparing to unveil his long-promised executive action on immigration reform. The action is expected to expand the pool of people who are protected from deportation.

But with just two years left in office and limits on what he can do with his pen and his phone, the staying power of the Mr. Obama's actions will depend largely on what they look like.

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Despite a rough midterm election for Democrats, President Obama says he won't wait for Congress to act on immigration, vowing to press ahead with...

There are a few different roads presidents can take to get around Congress. One popular approach is the formal executive order, although as a policy it can be fragile.

"All administrative forms of relief that are adopted as policies by executive branch officials are potentially subject to reversal by the next administration," New York University Law School Professor Adam Cox, an expert in immigration and constitutional law, told CBS News.

One way Mr. Obama could protect millions of illegal immigrants from deportation is by expanding another executive order, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, (known as DACA) a 2012 program designed for certain immigrants brought to the country illegally as children. It gave them renewable two-year reprieves from deportation and provided them with work permits.

This program could be expanded to cover more people who have been living in the U.S. without permission. A recent analysis by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) found that modifying the criteria--e.g., changing the age and educational thresholds, could expand the eligible population by tens of thousands or up to 1.9 million people. Or it could include those U.S. citizens' families who do not have permission to be in the U.S.: that population was estimated to be about 3.8 million in 2012.

Expanding DACA would mean relying on the Department of Homeland Security's power of prosecutorial discretion, in essence, exercising its judgment to defer deportation. Changes like these provide some relief from the threat of deportation, but they don't bestow citizenship or permanent residence.

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Will Obama's immigration moves have any staying power?