Original article (in Albanian) was published on 5/8/2024; Author: Pustina Patris
Claim: Kamala Harris is ineligible to become President of the United States because she does not hold U.S. citizenship
Verdict: False
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After President Joe Biden announced that he would not be running in the November 2024 presidential election and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, a claim has spread on social media suggesting that Harris cannot become President because she is not a U.S. citizen.
Questioning the citizenship or birthplace of U.S. presidential candidates is a recurring strategy.
Former President Obama faced persistent claims that he was not born in the U.S. throughout his campaign and two terms in office. These claims were also propagated by his successor, former President Trump, who is expected to run against Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. However, before his 2016 presidential bid, Trump eventually conceded that Obama was born in the U.S.
In 2020, leading up to the presidential election, Trump again questioned Kamala Harris’s eligibility, claiming he had ‘heard’ she was ‘not qualified’ to be vice president. It’s notable that both Harris and Obama are people of color.
The claim that Kamala Harris does not have U.S. citizenship is completely false.
Harris has served as Vice President of the United States from 2020 to 2024.
The criteria to become vice president are identical to those for president: being a natural-born U.S. citizen, being at least 35 years old, and having resided in the U.S. for a minimum of 14 years.
Thus, if Harris did not meet the qualifications for the presidency, she would not have been able to serve as vice president for the past four years.
Her birth certificate, reviewed by the Associated Press, confirms that she was born on October 20, 1964, in Oakland, California, U.S. Her mother, a scientist from India, and her father, an economist from Jamaica, met while studying at UC Berkeley.
According to the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, anyone born on U.S. soil is deemed a U.S. citizen and is eligible to hold the offices of president or vice president.
