Does a "certificate of birth" supposedly from Jamaica prove that Kamala Harris was not born in the United States, therefore making her ineligible to be president? No, that's not true: She was born in Oakland, California, in Alameda County in 1964, as verified copies of her birth certificate show. A purported Jamaican document in a social media post is not Vice President Harris' real birth certificate. The registrar general's department of Jamaica told Lead Stories that they did not have a birth record for Harris, as she was not born in Jamaica.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X, formerly known as Twitter, on August 21, 2024. It said:
CONNECTING THE DOTS..
KAMALA HARRIS:
CERTIFICATE OF BIRTH
CERTIFICATE THAT ABOVE IS A TRUE COPY OF AN ENTRY IN THE REGISTRAR GENERAL DEPARTMENT OF JAMAICA🇯🇲
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Wed Aug 28 16:29:26 2024 UTC)
The certificate of birth posted in the image reads, "CERTIFIED THAT ABOVE IS A TRUE COPY OF AN ENTRY IN THE REGISTRAR GENERAL'S DEPARTMENT OF JAMAICA." Lead Stories contacted the department for comment and they responded via email on August 28, 2024:
The Registrar General's Department would like to clarify that there are no birth records for Vice President Kamala Harris in our repository, as she was not born in Jamaica. We hope this information clarifies any queries regarding her place of birth.
Harris was born in California on October 20, 1964, as her birth certificate from the Oakland Office of Clerk-Recorder in the county of Alameda in California states. The Mercury News published Harris' birth certificate in 2020 (archived here) and it can be found here (archived here) and was published on Scribd.com:
Kamala Harris' mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, filed a petition for residency in the United States (archived here) in the late 1960s. The petition -- page 37 of 154, as seen below -- states that she was employed by the University of California, Berkeley, Department of Physiology from October 1963 to November 1965 when her daughter was born in Oakland:
(Source: USCIS website screenshot taken on Wed Aug 28 16:33:12 2024 UTC)
A Google Lens search (archived here) of the purported Jamaican certificate of birth in the X post did not return any legitimate sources for the document.
As Lead Stories previously reported, under U.S. law, Harris was a citizen of the United States at birth, as she was born in the U.S., and is therefore eligible to be president.
Other Lead Stories fact checks on claims concerning Kamala Harris can be found here and our fact checks on claims regarding the 2024 election can be found here.
