People on social media have now started to question Kamala Harris’s presidential eligibility, some referring to her as an anchor baby.

“Anchor baby” is a term used to refer to a child born to a non-citizen mother in a country that has birthright citizenship which will therefore help the mother and other family members gain legal residency.

In the U.S., the term is generally used as a derogatory reference to the supposed role of the child, who automatically qualifies as an American citizen under jus soli and the rights guaranteed in the 14th Amendment.

At the time of Kamala Harris’s birth neither her mother or father were citizens in America. While some have called her an anchor baby, others questioned if she was eligible to become the President.

Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution specifies that the president must be a natural-born U.S. citizen, at least 35 years of age and a resident within the U.S. for 14 years.

The framers of the Constitution may have added the 14 year wait period to prevent “wealthy European aristocracy or royalty coming to America, gaining citizenship, and then buying and scheming their way to the presidency without long-standing loyalty to the nation,” reads a 2011 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report.

Harris is a U.S. citizen, born on Oct. 20, 1964 in Oakland, California. Her father, Donald J. Harris, is a native of Jamaica who taught economics at Stanford University. Her mother, breast cancer researcher Shyamala Gopalan Harris, was born in India and came to the U.S. to earn a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

After her parents’ separation, Harris moved with her mother and sister to Montreal in the mid-1970s and attended Montreal’s Westmount High School.

Harris returned to the U.S. for college. She earned a B.A. from Howard University in 1986 and a J.D. from the University of California Law School in 1989. After working for years as a prosecutor in California, Harris served as California’s attorney general from 2011 to 2016 and was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2016.

Jacob Wohl, a 21-year-old conservative activist, noted that she spent part of her childhood abroad. “It’s not birtherism … It’s a question of whether the American People deserve to have a President that was Born and Raised in the Untied [sic] States,” Wohl tweeted.

Donald Harris’ Stanford biography states that he is a U.S. citizen, but it is unclear when he was naturalized. The Daily Caller News Foundation could not identify Shyamala Harris’ citizenship status. Harris’ senate office and presidential campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

The U.S., however, offers automatic citizenship to children born in the U.S. regardless of their parents’ immigration status, except for the children of foreign diplomats.

The 14th Amendment to the Constitution states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.” An 1898 Supreme Court ruling, U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, held that children born to immigrants residing permanently in the U.S. are natural-born citizens.

“There is no provision in the Constitution and no controlling American case law to support a contention that the citizenship of one’s parents governs the eligibility of a native born U.S. citizen to be President,” reads the 2011 CRS report.

President Donald Trump said in an Axios interview in October that he would try to limit birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants and other foreign parents. While some legal scholars argue that Trump may have the authority to limit birthright citizenship, most say that limits would require an act of Congress or a constitutional amendment.

Some commentators raised questions about presidential eligibility for former Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz, who was born in Canada to a U.S. parent, and the late John McCain, who was born in the Panama Canal Zone while his father was in the military.