Among the people who enrich my life is a Korean-born 23-year-old writer who recently completed graduate work at Columbia University and a 22-year-old Chilean-born artist completing his college education in Miami.

I wish I could be more specific. It is not in my nature to withhold information. But divulging more about them could put them at risk of deportation. Both, you see, are undocumented immigrants, who were brought to this country as children.

These young adults are among the almost 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. But not too long ago, they were considered children, who account for 15 percent, or 1.8 million, of the country's undocumented population.

Because of their ages, because of their ambitions, because time is running out, young adults like the writer and the artist must balance their lives on that precarious, tenuous line where dreams can turn into nightmares.

The dream is to belong; the nightmare is to disappear among the nameless who toil in this country without papers, without names, without recognition.

Being undocumented means they can't legally work, get a driver's license, vote or apply for federal loans or financial aid to complete their education. Imagine not being able to join your high school band in a trip to New Orleans because, though you play the trumpet like no one else in your school, you don't have a government-issued identification and therefore can't board a plane. It's the little things.

And the big things: Because they are not legal residents, when they attend college, in most states -- Florida is one of them -- they must pay for classes as if they were out-of-state students. At Miami Dade College, that elevates the cost of a typical semester to $5,826, while a legal resident would pay $1,146 for the same load of classes leading to a bachelor's degree. That puts college out of reach for most undocumented immigrants; indeed, for most people I know. And so the very reason why their parents brought them to the United States -- to give them a chance to have a better life -- evaporates the moment these young people reach the age where those chances ought to start materializing.

The writer and the artist were able to attend college due to the generosity of their families and/or to the understanding of college officials who everyday must cobble together all kinds of financial aid to help talented kids.

There is a remedy in sight, though. It is called the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, which has been introduced and debated in Congress since 2001 and which has wide bipartisan support.

The DREAM Act, as it is known, is designed to allow undocumented children and young adults to become legal residents of the United States, after they fulfill certain requirements. Residency status would put them in the path to citizenship, the goal in a society such as ours that was founded by foreigners yearning to become Americans.

The DREAM Act is not yet law because no one can agree on whether it should be voted on as an independent piece of legislation or included as part of a mythical and much-talked about immigration-reform bill that would supposedly once and for all secure the borders and legitimatize, in some way, the millions of undocumented immigrants who live in the U.S. Because the DREAM Act has such wide support, many well-intentioned people think that pulling it out of an immigration reform bill would weaken that bill and make it less likely to attract support, notes Ana Navarro, a Republican political strategist in Miami, who says she is torn between what might make the most sense politically and the immediate needs of young people who are growing up fast.

President Obama assured Hispanic voters that he would deal with immigration reform within a year after his election.

It is now clear that won't happen.

Obama has three years -- seven more if he's reelected -- to fulfill his agenda and make good on his promises, but these young people can't afford to wait that long.

By the time Obama, advocates and lawmakers agree on an immigration-reform bill, many of today's young immigrants may be too old to harbor any dreams that their lives would be any different from that of their parents.

The nightmare scenario is that politicians and advocates would lose sight of the individuals they say they are trying to protect, and that, in the rush to think big, to think strategically, to be all-encompassing to all people, they forget those for whom time is running out. If that happens, this generation of undocumented immigrants will have been doomed by good intentions.

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