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Kamala Harris is the current Vice President of the United States. She has had other important jobs like District Attorney of San Francisco, the Attorney General of California, and as a Senator. Kamala Harris is from the state of California, but her parents were immigrants from India and Jamaica. Kamala Harris is the first Person of Color to hold the office of Vice President of the United States, as well as the first woman to be elected for the job.
As a young child, Kamala Harris’s mother and father would bring her along to civil rights demonstrations. This introduced her to role models like Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and others that shaped her sense of purpose as someone who would always fight for justice. To begin her career in fighting for those that could not fight for themselves, she became an attorney.
Kamala Harris joined the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office in 1990. Her job was to work with victims of childhood abuse. Later in her career she became the chief of the Division on Children and Families for the city of San Francisco. In 2003, Kamala Harris became the District Attorney of San Francisco and created a program to help first-time drug offenders earn a high school diploma and find employment. Without her help, many people would be without education and jobs to support their families.
In 2017, Kamala Harris became a Senator for California. She was a member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. She used her place of power to help DREAMers stay in the United States. The DREAMers Act (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors) was put in place to ensure that children that were brought to the United States could achieve legal status as immigrants to finish their education. While working with immigrant children, Kamala Harris also determined that immigrant detention centers were substandard, and made the necessary changes to the centers to provide adequate living spaces.
Kamala Harris became Joe Biden’s running mate for the 2020 Presidential election. Her goal was to unite a nation that was facing many challenges.
Harris has been a vocal advocate for social justice and civil rights. She has pushed for police reform and has supported initiatives to combat systemic racism, promote equity in education and healthcare, improve infrastructure, strengthen gun control laws, and protect female reproductive rights Her background as a former prosecutor and senator has informed her approach to these issues.
Kamala Harris has been referred to as a "border czar" due to her role in addressing migration issues and managing the situation at the United States-Mexico border. In March 2021, President Joe Biden appointed Vice President Harris to lead diplomatic efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador) to address the root causes of migration. This assignment included overseeing U.S. efforts to manage the influx of migrants and asylum seekers at the southern border.