When it comes to ancestry and immigration, we all have our own stories. Mine begins in Eastern Europe.

My maternal grandmother Vukica (Victoria) was born to Milo and Milica Ivanisevich, of Cetinje, a village in Montenegro, once part of the former Yugoslavia. In an arranged marriage, she wed Nikola Grujicich, the son of Marko and Plana. Milo was a shoemaker with a prized customer, King Nicholas Petrovich (who reigned over Montenegro from 1910 until 1918). Above his shop’s doorway a sign read “For Palace Shoemaker Milo Ivanisevich.”

My paternal grandfather, Wasil Smerakanich, was born in America in 1909, one of eight children to Elias and Anna, who themselves came from the Galicia region of the Austria-Hungarian Empire. Elias developed miner’s asthma from employment in the Pennsylvania coal- mines. Deeply committed to his Eastern Orthodox Church, he prepared for his own funeral by telling one son, Fred, to stay home from work and ready the flowers, priest, and undertaker. (The 1930 census records them as residing at 156 Market St. in Kelayres, Kline Township, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania - with no radio!)

The Smerakaniches arrived prior to the Grujiciches. Nikola Grujicich was processed at Ellis Island (where the family name became Grovich) in 1925, two years ahead of his wife. She needed to wait for him to earn enough money to pay not only for her passage, but also that of their infant daughter, my Aunt Bess. When, two years later, my grandmother arrived with baby Bessie in her arms, she headed for West Virginia, where my grandparents ran a boarding home. Eventually, they re-settled in northeastern Pennsylvania, not far from the Smerakaniches.

As interesting as I find my own family history, I can’t compete with my wife. Her father, Giovanni Renato Nardini, hailed from Milan, Italy, and first traveled to the United States as the personal physician for famed Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini. After deciding to stay in the United States and specialize in psychiatry, he met and married my mother-in-law, Mary, who’d been widowed with two children at an early age. Renato persuaded Mary to relocate to his native Italy, but en route to Europe aboard a cruise ship, he met another physician, Anthony DePalma, the legendary Philadelphia orthopedist (and father of future film director, Brian), who persuaded him to return to America to retrain as an orthopod. Lucky for me, you could do that sort of retraining in that era.

My roots search suggests that all sides of the family played by the rules, minimal though they were then. Years ago, when one of our sons took a class trip to Ellis Island, he returned with pencil tracing of ancestor names. Nevertheless, I’ve heard the stories about WASP resistance to the social and economic rise of citizens with names like Smerakanich, Ivanisevich, Nardini, and Grujichich, a fact I try to keep in mind when evaluating how to solve our modern immigration conundrum. The goal of modern immigration reform needs to have as a priority getting right with the law.

A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey - taken before President Obama’s speech on Thursday - revealed that 57 percent favor a pathway for citizenship, but 42 percent disapprove of the president taking executive action (vs. 32 percent who approve). I suspect many of those who said they disapproved of his executive action incorrectly believe he has created a path to citizenship. Only Congress can do that. What he has done is use his enforcement powers under the Constitution to cause the deferment of deportation for certain classes of illegals, including parents of kids who are already citizens. None will receive health care nor the benefits of food stamps or Medicaid.

While his action will impact millions of individuals, it can be rescinded by a future president, or overridden should Congress act. Where the president himself has previously disputed his legal ability to take such action, the best possible outcome would be for Congress to respond, not with arguments about Obama’s process, but with legislation that offers a long-term substantive fix. One that not only gives opportunity to those here illegally to get right with the law, but also, to keep the economic engine of the country firing.

The president said:

“For more than 200 years, our tradition of welcoming immigrants from around the world has given us a tremendous advantage over other nations. It’s kept us youthful, dynamic, and entrepreneurial. It has shaped our character as a people with limitless possibilities — people not trapped by our past, but able to remake ourselves as we choose.”

On that there can be no debate. As I’ve said before, American exceptionalism has been fostered by a melting pot that encourages the pursuit of dreams. Immigrants are ambitious. They are risk-takers. They bear the characteristics of entrepreneurs who are still the economic lifeblood of this country. There is a tendency to believe such stories are the stuff of a bygone era and past generations. But the tales are still unfolding. The same gumption that all of our ancestors had in coming to America continues - which is no excuse for those who’ve broken the law to get here.

“We were strangers once, too,” the president said on Thursday. That’s certainly the case for families with the names Smerakanich, Ivanisevich, Nardini, and Grujichich.

Michael Smerconish writes for the Philadelphia Inquirer, and is host of “Smerconish” on CNN.