Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
President Obama spoke at the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials on Friday in Orlando.

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — President Obama on Friday sought to capitalize on his newly announced reprieve for young illegal immigrants with a broad attack on Mitt Romney and Congressional Republicans as obstacles to a comprehensive overhaul of the nation’s immigration system.

In what amounted to the general election campaign’s first debate on immigration policy, Mr. Obama appeared before the same Latino audience that heard from Mr. Romney, his Republican challenger, a day earlier. Mr. Obama used the opportunity to tell Latinos not to trust Mr. Romney’s softening language about immigration.
The president cited his decision last week to stop forcing out many young immigrants illegally brought into the country as children by relatives, saying he was “lifting the shadow of deportation” from people who deserved to stay. By contrast, he pointed to Mr. Romney’s opposition to legislation known as the Dream Act, intended to offer legal status to many of the same young people.
“It’s long past time that we gave them a sense of hope,” Mr. Obama said. “Now, your speaker from yesterday has a different view. In his speech, he said that when he makes a promise to you, he’ll keep it. Well, he has promised to veto the Dream Act, and we should take him at his word. I’m just saying. And I believe that would be a tragic mistake.”
In its response on Friday, Mr. Romney’s camp focused on economic issues. “No election-year speech can cover up the president’s job-killing policies that have led to 11 percent Hispanic unemployment and millions of Hispanics living in poverty,” said Amanda Henneberg, a Romney spokeswoman. “On Day 1, Mitt Romney will take our country in a new direction and get our economy back on the right track.”
The back-to-back appearances before the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials cast a sharp light on a topic that has divided the country in recent years, particularly as jobs have grown scarcer since the financial crisis of 2008. Each candidate faced a delicate balancing act in appealing to a growing segment of the electorate while papering over aspects of his record that are less appealing to this audience.
For Mr. Romney on Thursday, the challenge was to shift away from the harsher talk, of the Republican primary season, if not the party’s policies, when he was competing for conservative votes. For Mr. Obama a day later, the test was bolstering support from a critical part of his electoral coalition while managing disappointment over his failure to enact more sweeping immigration changes and over a deportation policy that has sent home more immigrants than in any other administration.
Mr. Obama offered no new policies or ideas for how he would accomplish in a second term what he did not in his first. Instead, he focused on blaming Republicans for blocking the passage of the Dream Act in 2010 and lamented that even those Republicans who once supported more expansive changes had now, he said, abandoned the issue.
“Congress still needs to come up with a long-term immigration solution, rather than argue that we did this the wrong way or for the wrong reasons,” he added. “So to those who are saying Congress should be the one to fix this, absolutely. For those who say we should do this in a bipartisan fashion, absolutely.
“My door has been open for three and a half years. They know where to find me.”
Mr. Obama received a warmer response here than Mr. Romney did. “He hit all the high notes,” said Rafael Anchia, a Democratic state representative from Texas.
But another Hispanic leader said Mr. Obama’s words rang hollow, given the lack of progress in forging a bipartisan solution. “Where is the leadership?” asked Alfonso Aguilar, executive director of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles.
Mr. Romney on Friday disassociated himself from an adviser who predicted that he would reverse Mr. Obama’s decision to allow young immigrants to stay. Ray Walser, co-chairman of Mr. Romney’s Latin America policy group, told The Daily Telegraph, a British newspaper, that “he would probably rescind this directive were he to be elected in November.”
The Romney campaign noted that Mr. Walser advises on foreign policy, not immigration. “Governor Romney has been clear that he will put in place a long-term solution that will supersede President Obama’s stopgap measure,” said Andrea Saul, a campaign spokeswoman.