Election Day was bad news for immigration activists who fear a Republican takeover in the U.S. House and a wider margin in the Senate will thwart theri attempts to pass immigrant-friendly legislation next year. So activists are hopeful that a lame-duck Congress returning next week will act quickly on the DREAM Act, a bill that grants legal status to certain undocumented students.

Selvin Arevalo (above) was painting houses in Portland and working toward a high school diploma when he got into a minor car accident this spring. Immigration authorities discovered he was here illegally, and jailed him for seven months. He was released last week after friends came up with the $2,000 bond money.

One of his first stops was joining two other undocumented students from the Boston area for this Veterans Day rally in Portland in support of the DREAM Act. "I came to this country when I was 14 years old. I came to this country just seeking for education, seeking for a better life to support back my family who still in Guatemala."

Now 25, Arevalo is facing deportation. But he hopes that the lame-duck Congress will pass the DREAM Act, so he can stay. "My dream is one day go to college, and I like computers--I want to study computer science. I know only the DREAM Act can give me that benefit."

Senate President Harry Reid, a Democrat from Las Vegas, is expected to bring the DREAM Act up for a vote soon. Activists are asking Maine's two moderate Republican senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, to side with Democrats on this issue.

"We're in crunch time right now--we've got one month basically before it becomes politically very difficult to pass the DREAM Act," says Kyle de Beausette, a Harvard student helping to lead the Student Immigration Movement in Boston. It helped put on the rally with El Centro Latino Maine.

"And we really need for Sen. Collins and Sen. Snowe to step forward, to stand up for the almost 1 million youth that would benefit from the DREAM Act, who know no other country except for this as their home and want for nothing else than the opportunity to contribute to the only country they know as their home," de Beausette said.

"The DREAM Act as it exists is not going anywhere," says Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which wants tighter controls on immigration. "I just don't see any kind of measure that would loosen immigration rules even conceivably being considered until 2013, and even then it would depend on the outcome of the presidential and congressional elections."

Krikorian says the DREAM Act goes too far by including students who arrived in the U.S. before they were 16, and have stayed here for at least five years. "It has to be lowered to something like 8 or 10 years old, so that we're covering kids who actually have grown up as Americans, psychologically and culturally," he says. "Secondly, all amnesties create problems, one of which is that they draw more illegal immigration in the future."

Arevalo's not talking about bringing his Guatemalan relatives to the United States. Right now, he says, he just wants to be able to visit his mother and not worry about coming across the border. He describes the U.S. as his country now. "And we believe that one day we're going to have all the opportunity of that the U.S. citizens have."

Arevalo learned he lost his request for asylum about two months ago, and is appealing the decision. In the meantime, he plans to continue taking classes.