Professor Oh Explains Kamala Harris’s U.S. Citizenship in Newsweek

Professor Reginald Oh has published an op-ed in Newsweek explaining why Kamala Harris is a natural born U.S. citizen and eligible for the Vice Presidency. Professor Oh’s op-ed rebuts an earlier Newsweek op-ed by Professor John Eastman (Chapman University), which raised doubts about Harris’s citizenship, notwithstanding the fact that she was born in the United States, because Harris’s parents were immigrants.

Professor Oh discusses the text of the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which provides that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” Professor Oh explains that Harris was born in the United States, and that she and her parents were also “subject to the jurisdiction” under the plain meaning of those terms. He explains that “virtually everyone who is physically present in the U.S.,” is subject to U.S. jurisdiction, “including citizens, foreign tourists, authorized immigrants and even unauthorized immigrants,” as all of those people must oby the laws of the nation.

Professor Oh also discusses the key Supreme Court precedent from 1898, U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, which, Professor Oh explains, “held that a Chinese-American child born in the U.S. to immigrant parents was a U.S. citizen.”

Professor Oh’s article is titled, “Born in the U.S.A.: Kamala Harris Is Eligible to Become Vice President.”