Rumors of Kamala Harris’ Citizenship Put to Rest
In early August, Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden, announced that his running mate would be Senator Kamala Harris, and soon after rumors resurfaced on social media about the former district attorney’s background and citizenship.
The original claim came from the self-proclaimed Twitter political expert, Jacob Wohl, who tweeted the false claim when Harris first began her presidential campaign back in early 2019. Wohl claimed that Harris could not be eligible to be President of the U.S. due to her not being a natural-born citizen. His tweet has since then been removed and his account was banned from the social media site. After ending her campaign in December 2019 and becoming the VP candidate earlier this month, the question of the status of her naturalization arose again.
Kamala Harris is officially the Democratic vice-presidential candidate. Learn more about the former prosecutor who is the first Black woman and the first Asian American to feature on a presidential ticket in US history. https://t.co/xStRaVVOML
— Twitter Moments (@TwitterMoments) August 12, 2020
First, there was the claim that she was not born and raised in the U.S., but that was proven to be false. Then the claim was that she would not be eligible due to her immigrant parents not being legal residents for five years before her birth began to gain traction. The U.S. constitution has guidelines of what criteria is needed to be met in or to be eligible for the highest office in the country saying, “no person except for a natural-born citizen, or citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible of the office of the President…”
However, the story of Harris’ parents and their entrance into the country proves that Harris is to be considered natural-born despite her parent’s immigration status.
Despite what social media posts say, Kamala Harris is eligible to be president. Her father and mother were born in Jamaica and India, respectively, but she is a natural-born citizen and eligible to be president of the United States. https://t.co/qTrOuylXbq #VPPICK pic.twitter.com/sEOU2UZYL8
— PolitiFact (@PolitiFact) August 11, 2020
Harris’ mother, Shyamala Gopalan, a biologist who worked on breast cancer research, came to the U.S. from India to attend graduate school in California in 1959. While Harris’ father, Donald Harris, an economics professor came to the U.S. in 1961 from Jamaica. The two met at the University of California Berkeley, they married, and Kamala Devi Harris was born in Oakland in October 1964. Although Harris did live in Quebec for her middle and high school years, she returned to the States to attend the historically Black Howard University to major in political science. Harris has spoken on these inaccurate claims, calling them ‘dirty tactics’ meant to discredit her. All evidence points to Harris being a natural citizen of the United States.
Kamala Harris was born in Oakland, California. She’s most certainly eligible to serve as president (and therefore is eligible to be vice president). Social media posts claiming otherwise are FAKE NEWS. Here’s the @APFactCheck https://t.co/2zZhNe7xmz
— Mike Sisak (@mikesisak) August 13, 2020
The conspiracy theories echo the claims that former President, Barack Obama was not a U.S. citizen due to his father being a Kenyan national, despite his mother being a natural-born citizen. With these claims put to rest, we hope that the Biden-Harris campaign can move forward without the distraction of falsities and work towards their goal of restoring democracy in our country in November. For more information about Harris and the 2020 presidential campaign, check out the campaign website here.
