“As long as this issue of immigration is a political ping-pong that each side uses to win elections and influence votes, I’m telling you it won’t get solved,” he said. “Because there are too many people who have concluded that this issue unresolved is more powerful. They want it to stay unresolved. It’s easier to use to influence elections. It’s easier to use to raise money.”

Alfonso Aguilar, executive director of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, accused both parties of using immigration for political purposes.

“People believe in border security, shared values, so why do we have this political impasse?” Aguilar said. “Because both parties are using this politically to appease certain constituencies.”

Republican leaders, responding to Romney’s weak cues on immigration, never got behind Rubio’s proposal, particularly in the House of Representatives, where the chairman of the House Judiciary committee has refused to hear the DREAM Act. House Speaker John Boehner in April said “it would be difficult at best” to take up Rubio’s as-yet-unwritten proposal, seen at the time as a way for Republicans to make inroads with Hispanic voters.

In the end, though, the conversation Rubio sparked this spring may have opened the door to the president’s policy. It certainly put pressure on the White House to act. Signs that Democrats were irritated by Rubio’s involvement emerged in April, when Reid wrote an op-ed in The Miami Herald criticizing the Florida senator’s nascent idea. Reid disliked the proposal in part because it didn’t offer a path toward citizenship — although neither does the administration’s directive.

But some of those in the thick of the battle say that merely by opening the door to activists, Rubio gave the movement “political space for this to happen,” said Gaby Pacheco, 27, an immigration activist from Miami who met with Rubio when he began crafting his immigration plan, and when it appeared White House officials had stalled.

Obama took persuading to move forward administratively. Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois led a letter-writing campaign to the White House, suggesting for several years that there is a long history of the government exercising prosecutorial discretion in immigration matters. He also asked Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano about it whenever she appeared in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Napolitano issued the administration’s directive last week.

“There was a lot of both inside and outside strategy that had to occur for this to happen,” Pacheco said. “But there was a moment where I believe that the president believed, and believed in our community, and believed that this was the right thing to do. And he had the courage to move forward and do it.”

Obama said Friday he refused to continue to look young people in the eye and tell them: “Tough luck, politics is too hard.” He acknowledged that Republicans are correct when they say it’s not a permanent fix — that’s got to come from Congress, he said.

“It’s a temporary measure that lets us focus our resources wisely while offering some justice to these young people,” Obama said. “But it’s precisely because it’s temporary 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.”

Romney, in his speech to NALEO, offered no plan to address the 11 million undocumented people living in the United States. He did tell the gathering on Thursday that he “won’t settle for stop-gap measures” such as the president’s plan for DREAM Act-eligible youth.

Young people affected by the policy said they’ll be watching for answers from Republicans. Those who will be helped by the Obama administration’s policy can’t vote — yet. But they say that they believe they will be able to someday, and they show no sign of affiliating with a party that is uninterested in them. They gathered in Washington last week to celebrate their victory at the headquarters of the AFL-CIO, which is closely aligned with the DREAM Act movement.

“We need to know what they want to do with us,” said Erika Andiola of Arizona, one of the young activists celebrating their win. “We want answers.”

David Lightman of the McClatchy Washington Bureau contributed to this report.