LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - "Unfortunately, despite his promises, President Obama has failed to address immigration reform," Romney said while speaking before the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials in Orlando, Florida.

"For two years, this President had huge majorities in the House and Senate -- he was free to pursue any policy he pleased. But he did nothing to advance a permanent fix for our broken immigration system. Instead, he failed to act until facing a tough re-election and trying to secure your vote."

Romney took a different approach to the sensitive issue of U.S. immigration than he did half year ago, when he was campaigning in the Republican primary race. Romney is currently not saying he will reverse President Obama's unilateral act of letting some illegal aliens stay in the United States and work. Romney is now saying he will "replace and supersede" Obama's order with something permanent.

Romney had previously declared that he was against letting any illegal aliens stay in the United States, including those who had been here a long time and had children in school.

Romney scored points against former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Gov. Rick Perry in the 2012 primaries by objecting to Gingrich's plan to grant permanent resident status to a limited number of illegal aliens who had been in the United States 25 years.

Gingrich explained his position last December in a televised debate in Des Moines, Iowa.

"I started with cases that I think are very hard to argue about: somebody who has been here 25 years, somebody who has been a good local citizen, may well belongs to your church, has children and grandchildren in the United States," Gingrich said.

"And I would have said flatly, I do not believe the people of the United States are going to send the police in to rip that kind of person out and ship them out of this country, particularly because those are precisely the people who are going to end up in churches as sanctuaries," Gingrich said.

Dianne Sawyer then asked Romney, "How many people should be sent back home to their country? Should they be tracked down to establish who they are, sent back home to their country?"

Romney took a hardline to the right of Gingrich. "I believe that any time that we start talking about a form of amnesty, whether it's technically amnesty or not, when we start talking about how people have been able to come here and stay illegally for some period of time that they're going to be able to stay here permanently and become permanent residents of the United States with rights to our education system, our health care system, and so forth, we will then create another magnet that draws people into our country illegally," Romney said.

"So the right course for us is to, once again, talk about what you described, secure the border," said Romney. "Once we do that, we can start talking about the 11 million or whatever number that might be that is in the country illegally.

"My own view is, those 11 million people should register the fact that they're here in the country," Romney said. "They should be given some transition period of time to allow them to settle their affairs and then return home and get in line--at the back of the line with everybody else that wants to come here."

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