On June 15, 2012, President Barack Obama announced an executive branch memorandum known as "Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals" (DACA). This change to immigration policy allowed eligible undocumented individuals brought to the country as children to receive a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation and become eligible for a work permit in the U.S. (without providing a path to citizenship for recipients). U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) began accepting applications for the program on August 15, 2012, and in less than one year, over half a million people applied to the DACA program. The next year, in 2013, a bi-partisan group of eight United States Senators—known as the Gang of Eight—wrote the first draft of the "Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013". The bill would have provided a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented Americans. It passed the Senate with a strong majority—68–32, with 14 Republicans joining all Democrats; however, the United States House of Representatives under Speaker John Boehner did not act on the bill, and it expired at the end of the 113th Congress.