WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The number of legal, permanent residents in the United States who applied for citizenship between October and January has reached a high point in the past four years, a new report from the Pew Research Center revealed on Friday.
"So far this fiscal year — from October 2015 to January 2016 — 249,609 immigrants have applied for naturalization, a 13 percent increase over the same time period a year before," the report said.
The report stated that while some organizers think the increase in a reaction to presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, an analysis of the data showed "there have been much larger percentage increases in past years, with jumps not always coming during election years."
Trump took a strong stance on immigration as soon as he entered the presidential campaign with plans to deport illegal immigrants living in the United States and build a wall on the border with Mexico to stop their flow.
