President Trump & conservative lawyers float birther conspiracy theory on Kamala Harris, questioning her eligibility for the post of Vice President.
BBC reports that she was born in the U.S. to a Jamaican father and Indian mother in Oakland, California, on October 20, 1964. As such, she is eligible to serve as President or vice-president. In the past, Mr. Trump promoted a false birther theory that ex-President Barack Obama was not born in the U.S. as well.
Several legal experts, including those from Northwestern and Cornell Universities, cite that the Vice President has the same eligibility requirements as the President. Hence, Ms. Harris needs to be a natural-born citizen, at least 35 years old, and a resident in the United States for at least 14 years. She meets all the criteria which end the inquiry. Further, anyone born in the U.S. and subject to its jurisdiction is a natural-born citizen, regardless of their parents' citizenship, says the Cornell Legal Information Institute.
The source of the President's claim is from a conservative law professor who questioned Ms. Harris' eligibility based on her parents' immigration status at the time of her birth. Prof Eastman's argument, where he claims that Ms. Harris may not have been subject to U.S. jurisdiction if her parents were, for example, on student visas at the time of their daughter's birth in California. He states that her father was (and is) a Jamaican national, her mother was from India, and neither was a naturalized U.S. citizen at the time of Harris' birth in 1964. According to these commentators, it makes her not a 'natural born citizen' and, therefore, ineligible for the office of the President and, hence, ineligible for the vice president's office.
Many lawyers have called this to be a simple case of racist birtherism redux, claiming these lines of inquiry as bogus.
Back in 2011, Mr. Trump claimed that President Obama might have been born in Kenya, even though he produced his birth certificate. He sought to take credit for dispelling doubts over Mr. Obama's eligibility. Mr. Trump also argued in 2016 that his Republican rival Ted Cruz was not eligible to run for President because he was born to a U.S. citizen mother and a Cuban-born father in Canada.
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