2015 Biden video shared out of context not proof he’ll ‘make a stream of illegal immigrants’

Social media users have shared an excerpt of 2015 remarks by then-Vice President Joe Biden and said it’s evidence that he, as current president, intentionally opened U.S. borders to immigrants.

"When you hear someone say Biden hasn’t intentionally opened the boarder show them this video from 2015," read sticker text that misspelled "border" on a Dec. 11 Instagram video.

The video played a clip of then-Vice President Biden in midsentence referring to an "unrelenting stream of immigration. Nonstop. Nonstop." Biden went on to say, "Folks like me who are Caucasian of European descent for the first time in 2017 will be in an absolute minority in the United States of America. Absolute minority. Fewer than 50% of the people in America from then and on will be white, European stock. That’s not a bad thing. That’s a source of our strength."

The video then cuts to a man who said, "You all trying to tell me you didn’t hear that guy just say he was going to make a stream of illegal immigrants, basically overflooding our immigration. Y’all didn't hear that? Liberals, Democrats, you gonna pretend like you didn’t hear that?"

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

Other social media users, and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, have used the clip of Biden’s remarks to make allegations similar to the Instagram poster’s.

Biden said the words portrayed in the video. But by sharing only a shortened clip from his much longer remarks, the Instagram post gives the false impression that Biden was encouraging a flood of illegal immigration into the U.S.

(Instagram screenshot)

Biden had been speaking Feb. 17, 2015, at the opening of a White House summit on countering violent extremism, and the comments shared in the Instagram video are part of a video that’s more than 18 minutes long. (The full video is available on C-SPAN.)

Biden spoke of integrating immigrants in communities to preempt radicalization and praised Boston for how it reacted to the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing by two Chechen immigrants. (See the 7:28 mark in the video player below).

"It did not turn its venom, its anger, its frustration against any community. It resolved to pull the communities together," Biden said of Boston.

Biden said the U.S. didn’t have all the answers to battle violent extremism, but suggested it had more experience because it is a "nation of immigrants."

"We are a melting pot. It is the ultimate source of our strength. It is the ultimate source of who we are, what we’ve become," Biden said. "And it started all the way back in the late 1700s. There’s been a constant unrelenting stream of immigration — not in little trickles, but in large numbers."

Featured Fact-check

Bloggers

stated on October 22, 2018 in a blog post

"Intensifying Hurricane Willa headed directly toward 10,000 migrant caravan path."

Biden then recalled a conversation with former Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew (at the 8:57 mark), in which Lee said the Chinese were in America "looking for the buried black box."

Biden explained that Lee meant that China was "looking for that secret that allows America to constantly be able to remake itself."

Biden said the secret had two parts, the first being Americans’ healthy skepticism toward orthodoxy.

Then, in the clip taken out of context, Biden said: "There’s a second thing in that black box. An unrelenting stream of immigration. Nonstop. Nonstop. Folks like me who are Caucasian of European descent for the first time in 2017 will be in an absolute minority in the United States of America. Absolute minority. Fewer than 50% of the people in America from then and on will be white, European stock. That’s not a bad thing. That’s a source of our strength. And so we have been, we haven’t always gotten it right. I don’t want to suggest we have all the answers. But we have a lot of experience of integrating communities into the American system, the American dream."

Biden neither suggested that people should enter the country illegally, nor proposed increasing immigration, legal or otherwise, into the U.S.

Biden, as president, also has not installed a policy to open U.S. borders, a common accusation from his critics. There have been historically high numbers of migrant encounters at the border, but it is not "open" for everyone to enter. There are about 20,000 U.S. border patrol agents, miles of barriers and surveillance technology to monitor who enters the country.

The claim that an excerpt from 2015 remarks by Biden proves that as president he has intentionally opened U.S. borders is False.