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At school, David Munoz is like any other senior.

The 18-year-old Southampton High student is partial to skateboarding, guitar playing, and the Guns N' Roses and Coldplay songs that fill his iPod. He has an A average and several college acceptances, but as his high school career comes to a close, his future is anything but certain.

"I can't drive, I can't vote, I can't get loans, I can't receive federal aid," he said. "Since I've grown up here half my life, this is all I know - America."

Munoz is an illegal immigrant, brought here at age 8 from Colombia on a visa he overstayed. He is among 65,000 such high school seniors who graduate every year into a world of limited possibilities.

Now, Munoz and other undocumented students are pinning their hopes on the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act.

Known as the DREAM Act, the federal bill would give undocumented immigrants who graduate from a U.S. high school and meet certain criteria the right to receive some types of aid and join the military, and make them eligible to pay in-state tuition, which in some states, including New York, they already do.

What's more, it would grant them conditional legal resident status and remove the fear of deportation. After completing two years of college or military service, a student would be eligible for citizenship.

Introduced each year since 2001, the measure has gotten extra attention this year because of an organized, tech-savvy group of young advocates who will lobby for it Tuesday. A diverse group of supporters has lined up behind the proposal, including President Barack Obama, the College Board and the heads of major corporations.

This week Obama is set to meet with congressional leaders at a twice-delayed meeting on how to move forward on overhauling immigration.

But groups on both sides say they won't consider the DREAM Act without broader immigration reform, resurrecting fears that it will get bogged down in the larger immigration debate, as in 2007.

Opposition to bill

Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, said his group, which advocates reducing immigration, would vigorously oppose the bill. "This act basically creates the path for their parents to become citizens," said Beck. "They're using the kids as a battering ram to get a full scale amnesty bill through."

Most students say they keep their status to themselves, sharing it with teachers only when they must. Jaime Martinez, a guidance counselor at Westbury High School, said he learns of the cases as college application time approaches. "Of course they feel frustration," he said. Graduating from college is the first obstacle, he said. "What is there for them to do after that?"

Though it wasn't her choice to enter the country illegally, Adelina Roque does not blame her mother. The Westbury High senior, 18, came here from Mexico when she was 3. She doesn't ask her mother how she got here, doesn't want to know.

She is ranked 11th out of more than 200 students. She got into more than a dozen colleges and received merit scholarships from the private schools, but not enough to cover her expenses. "I'm not really sure about my future," she said. "It's a lot of money and I don't work. I'll probably end up going to Nassau Community College."

She went to the mall once for a job, but all applications asked for a Social Security number.

For Johanna Campoverde, a senior who graduated this month from a private school in East Hampton, a class trip to the U.S. Virgin Islands last year realized her worst fears. Campoverde, who requested her mother's maiden name be used, was arrested at the airport and has been fighting deportation.

The legal battle has taken its toll. "I went into a deep phase of depression; I just wanted to stay in bed all day and not go to school," said Campoverde, who was brought to the U.S. from Ecuador when she was 5.

Her grades dropped to a B average from A's. She got into four colleges, including Hunter College and the University of Miami. "If I decide to go to one of these colleges, I can't pay my immigration attorney," she said, adding she plans to go to Suffolk County Community College.

Tuesday, Campoverde will join hundreds of others in Washington to lobby in support of the bill. "We came here because of our parents who wanted a better life," she said. "We've reached every level that we can accomplish, but now we're stuck."