Chicago mayoral candidates Gery Chico and Miguel del Valle joined immigration advocates this morning in calling on Mark Kirk, the state's newly elected GOP senator, to support the DREAM Act, a stalled piece of bipartisan legislation that would allow some undocumented youth to normalize their status by earning a degree or through military service.

Chico spoke of his family's immigration story during remarks. But del Valle used the event to take Rahm Emanuel to task, criticizing the mayoral frontrunner for failing to do more to move immigration reform through Capitol Hill as a congressman and during his tenure as President Obama's Chief of Staff. While serving in the House of Representatives, Emanuel called immigration the "third rail of American politics" and later argued 2010 was a bad year to advance an immigration reform bill, the Los Angeles Times reported. Here's a clip of del Valle this morning:

With approximately 200,000 Latino voters in the city, and many more from Chinese, Polish, and other immigrant groups, Emanuel's positions on this subject are likely to come up again as the mayoral campaign rolls on.