Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, speaks at a campaign event at the Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum, Monday, Oct. 1, 2012, in Denver, Colo. (AAron Ontiveroz, The Denver Post) Related Stories Mitt Romney addresses crowds at Denver rally 
 
 Young illegal immigrants who receive temporary work permits to stay in the United States under an executive order issued by President Barack Obama would not be deported under a Mitt Romney administration, the GOP presidential hopeful told The Denver Post Monday. 
 
 "The people who have received the special visa that the president has put in place, which is a two-year visa, should expect that the visa would continue to be valid. I'm not going to take something that they've purchased," Romney said. "Before those visas have expired we will have the full immigration reform plan that I've proposed." 
 
 In June, Obama issued an executive order that will allow the so-called "dreamers" — kids who were brought here by their illegal immigrant parents when they were young — a temporary reprieve from deportation if they stay out of trouble and meet certain requirements such as graduating from a U.S. high school. 
 
 The Obama administration has sharply criticized Romney's earlier ideas for immigration reform, which have called for all citizens living in the U.S. illegally to self-deport. 
 
 Romney said in a sit-down interview with The Post aboard his campaign bus ahead of a Denver rally that he would work with Congress in the first year to pass permanent immigration reform legislation. 
 
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 He didn't furnish specifics on that plan, but has said in previous interviews that students who served in the military may get a path to citizenship. 
 
 "I actually will propose a piece of legislation which will reform our immigration system to improve legal immigration so people don't have to hire lawyers to figure out how to get here legally," Romney said. "The president promised in his first year, his highest priority, that he would reform immigration and he didn't. And I will." 
 
 Obama's order mirrors the "DREAM" Act, which has been dead on arrival in every Congress that's tried to pass it. It was blocked by Senate Republicans two years ago. 
 
 Romney also was hazy about the future of Colorado's medical marijuana industry, which reaps more than $5 million a year in state sales taxes, saying his administration would enforce federal drug laws, that prohibit marijuana for any use. 
 
 "I oppose marijuana being used for recreational purposes and I believe the federal law should prohibit the recreational use of marijuana," he said. 
 
 Romney will spend Tuesday holed up preparing for the first presidential debate Wednesday at the University of Denver. He said he was looking forward to sharing a stage with the president to clear up distortions of the last few months. 
 
 "I think what's going to happen in this debate is each of us will get the opportunity to describe our pathway forward for America," Romney said. "And for the last several weeks and months, the president has dramatically distorted my own views. I look forward to the debate so people will understand what I actually believe." 
 
 Romney said he knew not everyone was going to agree with him after Wednesday's face-off. 
 
 "Do they want to continue with the status quo, which has lead to a circumstance where we now have three years where each year the rate of growth in our economy has slowed," he said. "The policies of the past are not working." 
 
 After the interview, Romney delivered an economic speech to a crowd of roughly 6,000 at the Wings Over the Rockies air and space museum in Denver's Lowry neighborhood. 
 
 The Obama campaign dismissed Romney's speech by arguing his plan would ease taxes on the wealthy and raise taxes for the middle class, a claim Romney disputes. 
 
 "The economy is not in recovery," Romney said to a lively crowd packed in an old hanger full of old airplanes. "We're not seeing a real recovery. The president's policies have not worked." 
 
 Allison Sherry: 202-662-8907, asherry@denverpost.com or twitter.com/allisonsherry ||||| Topics: Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, Immigration, Opening Shot, Dream Act, Politics News 
 
 It took three-and-a-half months, but Mitt Romney has finally answered a very simple question: If you’re elected president, will you honor the executive order that Barack Obama issued granting legal status to potentially more than a million children of illegal immigrants? 
 
 “The people who have received the special visa that the president has put in place, which is a two-year visa, should expect that the visa would continue to be valid,” Romney told the Denver Post in an interview that was published late Monday night. “I’m not going to take something that they’ve purchased.” 
 
 This may seem like a rather obvious position to take, especially when you consider that the opposite view would involve revoking the legal status of children and possibly subjecting them to deportation. But Romney has – very awkwardly – tried to sidestep the entire question since mid-June, when Obama surprised the political world with his executive order. 
 
 In the immediate wake of Obama’s announcement, CBS’s normally agreeable Bob Schieffer tried and failed four times in one interview to elicit a “yes” or “no” from Romney on the question of whether he’d repeal Obama’s order. Romney would only say that he favored working with Congress to craft a comprehensive legislative solution that would address the legal status of children and everyone else here unlawfully. 
 
 Of course, legislation of that magnitude would probably take months – at least — to make its way through Congress and to a President Romney’s desk, and that’s assuming it wouldn’t die in the House or Senate. But Romney steadfastly refused to say whether he’d leave the executive order in place while that process played out. 
 
 A similar scene played out a few weeks ago, when Romney participated in a forum sponsored by Univision. Asked once again whether he’d repeal Obama’s executive order, the GOP nominee insisted he didn’t favor mass deportations but wouldn’t provide a direct answer. 
 
 But now, barely a month before Election Day and on the eve of his first debate with Obama, Romney has finally provided some clarity. This entire saga from June until now is in many ways a perfect illustration of the political struggle Romney has faced since securing the GOP nomination. 
 
 One of Romney’s problems involves the power Obama has at his disposal. It’s customary for a candidate to cater to his or her base during the primaries, then adopt a more moderate posture for the fall. And when Romney finally put away Rick Santorum this spring, it looked like he was planning to use immigration – an issue on which he’d moved about as far right as possible during the primaries – to make his pivot. 
 
 Marco Rubio, Florida’s Republican senator, was making noise about creating his own watered down Dream Act, one that would spare law-abiding children of illegal immigrants deportation without offering them a path to citizenship. Romney telegraphed his intention to endorse the plan once Rubio formally unveiled it, and immigration groups began sending signals that they’d line up behind it, too. It was beginning to look like Romney would pull off something of a coup – creating the appearance of genuine leadership while repairing some of the damage done by his primary season antics to his standing with Latinos, and swing voters in general.
– After months of dodging the question, Mitt Romney has finally said that as president, he'd support President Obama's executive order giving legal status to illegal immigrants' kids. "The people who have received the special visa that the president has put in place, which is a two-year visa, should expect that the visa would continue to be valid," he told the Denver Post. "I'm not going to take something that they've purchased." But Romney's "belated admission now that he wouldn’t repeal the executive order hardly feels like a bold stroke of leadership. It’s a faint echo," writes Steve Kornacki at Salon. And it illustrates how Obama's current political power has posed a roadblock for Romney. During the primaries, Romney veered far right on immigration, but he appeared set to use the issue "to make his pivot" toward the center for the general election, likely by endorsing Sen. Marco Rubio's "watered down Dream Act." But before he could do so, Obama "swooped in" and "stole Romney's thunder" with the executive order. In "a particularly awful spot" between the ever-more extreme GOP base and swing voters, Romney was left with "nowhere to go on immigration, and pretty much nothing to say." Click for Kornacki's full column.