“Kamala and I are committed to strengthening illegal immigration.” The phrase written in yellow over the image of US President Joe Biden stands out in many Facebook posts, racking up hundreds of likes and shares.

The shared video is a speech given by Biden during the Democratic Party convention on August 19, in which the US president appears to claim that both he and his vice president, the current Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, intend to “strengthen illegal immigration”. At least, that is what appears in the Portuguese subtitle of the excerpt shared massively on social media. But the title is incorrect, as it replaces the word “legal” with “illegal”.

In the original speech (below), available in full on YouTube, Joe Biden can be heard saying, in English, that he intends to strengthen procedures. Cold immigration, as the automatic subtitling of the video platform allows us to confirm.

The official transcript of the speech, published on the White House website on August 19, also attests that the expression used by Joe Biden was “legal immigration” and not “illegal immigration” as disinformation articles claim.

The excerpt from the speech, with more context, is as follows: “So I had to take executive action. The result of the executive action I took: border clashes have decreased by more than 50%. In fact, there are fewer border crossings today than when Donald Trump left office. And unlike Trump, let’s not demonize immigrants by saying they are… that they ‘poison the blood of America’… ‘they poison the blood of our country.’ Kamala and I are committed to strengthening legal immigration, including protecting DREAMers and more.”

Biden ends by referring to the “Dreamers,” evoking a project launched in 2012 by Barack Obama that would allow young people who were brought illegally to the United States as children to receive protection from deportation and the right to a work permit and a social security number. Since the text was not approved at the time, Obama, then president, decreed DACA (“Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals”), a program that grants these people permission to remain in the country for up to two years, legally. Since then, young people who received authorization to remain in the country were called “DREAMers.”

That is, after referring to the commitment to strengthen “legal immigration,” Joe Biden specifies a procedure with a view to legalizing people in the country.

The transcribed version of Joe Biden’s speech is available on the White House website

Moreover, the American press that reported on Biden’s speech and covered the Democratic convention, from the New York Times to CNN, from Forbes to USA Today, write that Joe Biden is committed to “strengthening legal immigration.”

Conclusion

Those who listen closely to the video, the official transcript of Joe Biden’s speech and even the American press deny the accusation spread on social media that the President of the United States of America promised to reinforce “illegal immigration.” The words used by the American leader were precisely the opposite: the reinforcement of “legal immigration.”

Thus, according to Observer’s classification system, this content is:

MISTAKEN

In Facebook’s ranking system this content is:

FAKE: Claims about the main content are factually inaccurate. This option usually corresponds to “false” or “mostly false” ratings on fact-checking websites.

NOTE: This content was selected by Observador as part of a fact-checking partnership with Facebook.