The next president won’t dare take the political risk that would come with undoing recent executive action on immigration reform, a defiant President Obama said Tuesday as he predicted his highly controversial steps will survive the test of time, even under a Republican administration.

Mr. Obama conceded that without new legislation, his action — which includes de facto amnesty for more than 4 million illegal immigrants — technically could be undone rather easily.

But in practical terms, the president said his successor will be unable to roll back his executive moves because doing so would carry grave political consequences.

His comments underscore the White House’s belief that the executive action, while lacking the heft of actual law, still can permanently transform the way America deals with illegal immigration.

“It’s true a future administration might try to reverse some of our policies. But I’ll be honest with you — the American people basically have a good heart and want to treat people fairly and every survey shows that if, in fact, somebody has come out and subjected themselves to a background check, registered, paid their taxes, the American people support allowing them to stay. So any future administration that tried to punish people for doing the right thing, I think, would not have the support of the American people,” Mr. Obama told a supportive crowd at a town hall meeting in Nashville. “It’s true, theoretically, a future administration could do something that I think would be very damaging. It’s not likely, politically, that they reverse everything we’ve done.”

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