According to a new federal survey, fewer undocumented youths are applying for deferred action, which would grant them a temporary reprieve from deportation.
The latest statistics from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services released Friday showed that the agency, which saw its requests for deferred action for childhood arrivals spike significantly in September and October, saw a drop in those requests by more than 1,000 from their September peaks.
Since the deferred action program was initiated by the Obama administration in August--which allowed immigrants who came to the U.S. as children to apply for a two-year stay of deportation provided that they arrived before age 16, had a clean record, and met other requirements--federal immigrations services have seen their daily intake of applications rise by nearly 3,000 from 2,913 requests per day in August to 5,715 in September and 5,328 in October. However, those daily application requests dropped in November to 4,527, 801 less than the previous month and 1,188 less than their September peak.
The totals applications received by the agency per month also fell from their October peak of 117,213 received applications to 45,272-71,941 fewer in only a month's time.
California, Texas, New York, Florida and Illinois are the top five states that have given the most deferred action applications to the federal agency. The most applications are coming from Mexican immigrants, who have submitted 212,514 to immigration services, with El Salvadorians second with 13,769 applications and Honduran immigrants third with 8,577 applications submitted.
David Leopold, general counsel with the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told ABC News Univision that one reason for the dropoff in applications is that many undocumented immigrants who could qualify for the program may have decided not to apply during November as they were unsure of what the result of the U.S. presidential election would be.
Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate, had said during the campaign that he would end deferred action if elected, although he would seek to put in place a permanent solution.
"Since the election, we've seen a spike [in calls regarding deferred action for childhood arrivals]," Leopold said. "And that does not surprise me at all, I actually expected that."
Up to 1.7 million of the 4.4 million unauthorized immigrants ages 30 and under could qualify around the U.S. for deferred action, the Pew Hispanic Center reported in August.
Immigration-which has divided both Democrats and Republicans--was the issue that spurred Latinos to vote for President Obama in record margins in the Nov. 6 election. This prompted both Democrats and Republicans to state days after the election that they would need to sit down together to discuss a permanent solution to fixing the immigration system.