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Business groups have long been active players in the nation's immigration debate. They represent employers who need to recruit workers, after all — employers who are sometimes investigated, even prosecuted, for hiring workers who are not approved to work in the U.S. legally.

Many big employers have been pushing for reforms that would allow them to keep more science and technology workers and skilled laborers in the country. But the executive action President Obama announced Thursday leaves out much of what the business lobby has been advocating for.

Obama's announcement will allow more undocumented immigrants with U.S.-born children to apply for work permits, among other things. But the policies will not help businesses with their key immigration concerns, says Matt Sonnesyn, a senior director at the Business Roundtable, which represents large businesses.

"Last night's actions do help for those [workers] who are already here — to have some security that they're going to remain and continue working," he says. "But they don't really address how we're going to attract and retain those workers from around the world."

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He notes the president did extend a program giving high-skilled students the ability to work while applying for a visa. And there is some added flexibility for those who already have work visas to move between jobs.

But Sonnesyn says the action does not increase the total number of visas available — either to high- or low-skilled temporary workers. That is a big blow to business groups, especially as the U.S. economy recovers. Many big employers want to recruit more science and technology workers, as well as skilled laborers in fields like manufacturing and construction.

But that's also not a surprise, Sonnesyn says. The president could only act on enforcement — things like border control and deportation of criminals — not on legislation.

"The president just didn't have the authority to go to the core of what we see as important for growing the economy over time," Sonnesyn says.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who was an economist in the George W. Bush administration and is now president of the policy analysis group American Action Forum, says he thinks "the business groups are going to be, by and large, disappointed. There wasn't really much in there for them."

Many business groups, including the National Federation of Independent Business and National Association of Manufacturers, support a national system that allows employers to check whether someone is permitted to work legally.

That system, known as E-Verify, would reduce an employer's legal liability if it hires someone with falsified documents. E-Verify received no mention in Obama's address.

Holtz-Eakin says what might be surprising, given the partisan rhetoric around immigration, is how little daylight there is between the president's policy position and that of most Republicans and the business community. "There's much less division than people realize," Holtz-Eakin says.

The president supports the immigration bill that passed the Senate more than a year ago. The business community also supports that legislation, but the Republican leadership in the House has not brought it up for a vote.

"There's no disagreement on the policy. The issue is 100 percent politics," Holtz-Eakin says. "And the sad reality is, the president pushed the politics in the wrong direction last night."

That's certainly the position of some Republicans in leadership, who are angry the president acted unilaterally.

Robert Litan, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, says the president "could've done all this quietly, without making any announcement whatsoever."

But he didn't. Instead, Litan says, Obama chose a high-stakes political gamble that could pay off, if Republicans in Congress take up the president's challenge and pass immigration legislation.

In any event, Litan says, it's hard to know what the ultimate business implications of Thursday night's actions are.

"The bottom line is, the business community, like everybody else, is waiting to see what the next move is going to be in Congress — whether there's going to be a legal challenge and so forth," Litan says.

"And at the end of the day," he adds, "whatever the president can do can only last for two years. The next president could decide to undo the whole thing."

Immigration

You probably recognize him as the energized muscle man with the ponytail selling his exercise machine, The Gazelle, on late-night infomercials: Tony Little, also known as America's Personal Trainer.

He's been into bodybuilding since his teenage years. After a knee injury playing football in high school, he was taken off the field and into the weight room.

"I wasn't allowed to take gym class because my knee would pop out of joint," Little says. "I sat down and talked to the principal and said to him, 'Hey listen, I'm really a physical guy. This is driving me nuts not to have gym class. Is it possible that if I lifted weights, could I get credits for gym class if I was working out?' "

The school made an exception for him and Little discovered a passion for bodybuilding.

"I entered my first contest and won it and then entered my second contest and won it," he says. "Right after my second contest, I mean, I was offered sponsorships. And I did become Mr. Florida, so that was pretty cool."

Little was on track to the prestigious Mr. America competition back in the early '80s. He says he had a real shot at winning back then.

"Maybe three to five weeks out from being in it, I was driving," he says. "And a loaded school bus ran a red light. It's like everything turned slow motion when you see the yellow."

The bus slammed into his car.

"I was more adrenaline-freaked-out that it was a school bus than anything," he says. "So I hopped out of the car and tried to help and the bus driver locked the door."

He later found out that the bus driver was drunk.

Little was lucky to be alive, but his dreams of becoming Mr. America were shattered.

"I had three herniated discs out of the five lower lumbar disks in my back," Little says. "And I had a vertebrae in my neck that was protruding, was hitting the nerves in my right shoulder and arm."

He says he was in excruciating pain. For the next two years, he was cooped up in a small condo without a job and without any exercise.

“ You start upping the painkillers and drinking alcohol. And all it was doing was just putting me down, down, down, down.

- Tony Little

"You start upping the painkillers and drinking alcohol," Little says. "And all it was doing was just putting me down, down, down, down. And just getting depressed upon depressed upon depressed."

Most of his time was spent watching TV. And that's exactly what got him back on his feet.

Little happened to flip on one of Jane Fonda's exercise programs.

"She was starting a revolution [to get people to] do group exercise, which I thought was pretty cool," Little says. "Because she had a video, I wanted a video too, you know?"

He was motivated enough to leave his condo and go to the local cable company to inquire about his own televised exercise program.

"Fifteen shows for $5,500 and you can have your own show on TV at 250,000 homes," he says. "I said, 'Okay, I'll do it.' "

It was his big break.

"And that's when I started, 'You can do it!' " Little says. "You got to believe in yourself, man. We only have one shot in life and you got to make it a solid one. And sometimes it might have to be a hundred shots."

First, there was James Foley. Then Steven Sotloff. Finally, Abdul Rahman Kassig, also known as Peter Kassig. All three were American hostages, brutally murdered by the so-called Islamic State.

This past week the White House confirmed that it's conducting a review of its hostage policy, but in a press conference, White House spokesman Josh Earnest says the United States will not change its policy on ransoms: America does not pay them.

Instead, the review will focus on how the U.S. government manages itself in a hostage situation and how the many agencies involved communicate with the families of the victims.

Some of the families say they've been left in the dark.

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"We had no one who updated us. Let's put it that way ... no one at all," says Diane Foley, the mother of James Foley, who was infamously killed this August by the group which calls itself the Islamic State.

"I found out that Jim had been beheaded by a journalist who called me crying on the phone. That's how I found out," she tells NPR's Rachel Martin. "No one from State or FBI or the White House reached out to us at all. None of them confirmed the authenticity. I mean, it was just awful."

Dane Egli managed hostage situations for the Bush administration during the Iraq War. At the worst point, he says he put a poster up to keep track of all the Americans who'd gone missing — upwards of 50 at one point. His story of communication with families painted a different picture than the one Diane Foley experienced.

"The national leadership would get involved and call family members when it was appropriate. President Bush, Vice President Cheney, National Security Adviser Dr. Condoleeza Rice," he says. "There would be occasions when we might put them on the phone. They might ask to talk to parents or members of the family. Just each case was different."

The Price Of A Life

There is also the issue of ransoms. Diane Foley says her family did at points contemplate collecting and offering a ransom for James' return, which would go against official U.S. policy.

But Foley says even if the government hadn't intended to pay a ransom to free her son, talking to the terrorists could have yielded key intelligence about her son's location.

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Egli, the former White House adviser, concedes there are moments when just engaging has its advantages.

"I think you have to acknowledge there's going to be some situations where if you could beat them at their game that you might temporarily allow a waiver for a case," Egli says.

In other words, engage. Maybe even make a half-baked promise, he says. Walk right up to the line without crossing it.

"Be it offering them a ransom or a ride on the space shuttle that no longer exists. In the trading, horse trading schnookery business, you would try to beat them at their game," he says.

But in Egli's estimation, the recent release of Sgt. Beau Bergdahl, held in captivity by the Taliban, in exchange for five high-ranking Taliban officials may have crossed a line into ransom-paying.

"This threw us off a little bit, those of us that were ex-military that have been in the hostage rescue business," Egli says. "It sends a message to the families or those who had hostages who were killed. 'Well, how come we didn't trade or do something for our family members?'"

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Diane Foley says she was grateful for the Bergdahl's family reunion. "And since they had negotiated with the Taliban for his release I was certainly hopeful that they would do a similar thing for the four other Americans being held. So I was incredulous when that did not happen."

Egli says having a government pay a ransom, cash or otherwise, provides short-term gain at a enormous long-term loss.

"While you may enjoy having your loved one freed, the millions of dollars or hundreds of millions of dollars that were just transferred in cash to al-Qaida or ISIS ... have just underwritten their next mission," he says.

Few Options For Families

Even so, history suggests some room for ambiguity. New York Times reporter David Rohde, who was held hostage by the Taliban in 2008 and 2009, says the American government has a long-standing practice when it comes to ransom payments of saying one thing publicly and sometimes doing another.

"The real policy is the government will not pay, but companies and families have paid for a long time and the government has turned a blind eye," Rohde says.

The families are in an impossible position, Rohde says. They want to do something, but "it's actually not in your hands in the end.You're trapped in these massive international geopolitical struggles," he says.

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"The cruelest thing about a kidnapping is that it gives the family the false sense that they can, if they just try hard enough, they can save their loved ones," he says. "But the kind of kidnapping we have today, the groups involved, that's just not true."

That certainly doesn't mean most families give up. In 2012, Marc and Debra Tice's son Austin was taken hostage in Syria while he was working as a freelance journalist. They have not heard from his captors but they still believe their son is alive.

Like Diane Foley, they feel the U.S. government has held them at too far a distance, denying them security clearance to learn more information about their son's situation, if there is any. They also say they feel shut out of the current review of hostage policy.

"We haven't been given a role," Debra Tice says. Her husband Marc says they have asked to participate but no one from the government has contacted them.

Debra Tice says if she was to meet with the president she'd like to tell him the following: "We would certainly ask him to think about what limits would he accept on finding his own child and bringing them safely home."

"We just would beseech him to think of our son in the very same way," she says.

A spokesperson for the White House declined NPR's request for an interview on the hostage policy review.

The turducken — a whole chicken stuffed inside a whole duck stuffed inside a whole turkey, all boneless — is a relatively recent culinary phenomenon. Though popularized in the past 20 years with the help of Louisiana's Chef Paul Prudhomme and John Madden, who brought one to a football game broadcast in 1997, the turducken actually builds on a long tradition of creative bird-into-bird stuffing.

Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimod de la Reynire, the world's first restaurant critic, in 1803 launched the Almanach des Gourmands, what the Paris-based dining historian Carolin Young calls the world's first serial food journal. He would edit and publish this best-selling guide to seasonal cooking and restaurants until 1812.

Like any good publisher, Grimod de la Reynire knew he needed to slide in some extra flair from time to time. And in 1807, he put out a recipe for rti sans pareil, the roast without equal.

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The daredevil-ish recipe calls for a tiny warbler stuffed in a bunting, inserted in a lark, squeezed in a thrush, thrown in a quail, inserted in a lapwing, introduced to a plover, piled into a partridge, wormed into a woodcock, shoehorned into a teal, kicked into a guinea fowl, rammed inside a duck, shoved into a chicken, jammed up in a pheasant, wedged deep inside a goose, logged into a turkey. And just when you think a 16-bird roast is probably enough, it's not. This meat sphere is finally crammed up into a Great Bustard, an Old World turkey-turned-wrapping paper, for this most epic of poultry meals.

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While there's no record of anyone actually making the rti sans pareil, Grimod de la Reynire seemingly achieved what is every publisher's goal: capturing (generations of) eyeballs. (If you want a visual of the concoction, check out the illustrations that Wired magazine and Vice came up with.)

It's clear that culinary stunts with meat started long before chefs were grilling steaks with molten lava. Take the cockentrice, a half-pig, half-turkey combo that rode the line between mythical beast and gastronomic masterpiece during the reign of Henry VIII in the 16th century. It's been re-created by Richard Fitch, the project coordinator for the Historic Kitchens at Hampton Palace, who told Vice that while these dishes certainly weren't the norm, Henry VIII once served a cockentrice and a dolphin to the French King, Francis I. (As we've previously reported, royals of that era went to great lengths for a culinary thrill.)

While the roti may seem freakish or excessive today, we do have the bacon-wrapped alligator, a sort of modern-day meat mummy.

For those who heart turducken, the demand is high enough that big-box stores like Sam's Club and Costco now stock them. There's even a vegetarian version, if the stuffing concept floats your boat.

food history

Thanksgiving