Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has been subject to repeated attacks that she’s not eligible to run for president because of her racial identity and background.
A July 31 Threads post claimed Harris was not American because she “was born in Canada.”
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(Screengrab from Threads)
Harris was born Oct. 20, 1964, in Oakland, California. She grew up in a Black middle-class neighborhood in Berkeley, California.
Her parents separated when she was 5 years old. When Harris was about 12, she moved with her mother and sister to Montreal after her mother, a scientist, took a research position at the Jewish General Hospital and a teaching role at McGill University, according to Vox, CTV News and the Los Angeles Times.
Harris moved back to the United States after graduating in 1981 from Westmount High School in Quebec, the Toronto Star reported.
Harris graduated from Howard University, an historically Black university, in Washington, D.C., in 1986 and earned her law degree at the University of California, Hastings in 1989.
Constitutional scholars have told PolitiFact that because Harris was born in the U.S., she is qualified to run for president.
We rate the claim that Harris was “born in Canada” Pants on Fire!
RELATED: Kamala Harris is again facing attacks on her racial identity. Here’s more about her background.
Truth-o-meter Ruling
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Vice President Kamala Harris was born in 1964 in Oakland, California.
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Harris lived in Canada from ages 12 to 18. She moved back to the United States after finishing high school.
Statement
Context
a postSpeaker/Target
Statement Date
Our Sources
Threads post (archived version), July 31, 2024
Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress, Kamala Devi Harris, accessed Aug. 1, 2024
Vox, "Kamala Harris’s immigration gamble," Nov. 1, 2017
CTV News, "Rising Democratic party star Kamala Harris has Montreal roots," Oct. 9, 2017
Los Angeles Times, "How race helped shape the politics of Senate candidate Kamala Harris," Sept. 30, 2015
Toronto Star, "Classmates from Kamala Harris's Canadian high school cheered her potential run for president," Dec. 29, 2018
PolitiFact, "Birtherism is back, but Kamala Harris, born in California, is eligible to be president," July 22, 2024
PolitiFact, "Kamala Harris is again facing attacks on her racial identity. Here’s more about her background.," July 26, 2024
PolitiFact, "Fact-checking ‘Kamala Harris Facts’," July 25, 2024
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