The millions of Americans who are ineligible to be president are excluded from an important part of the American Dream.

More than 20 million Americans are ineligible to become president because they were not born in the United States and obtained citizenship by naturalization. Valere Gaspard looks at the “tiers” of citizenship that Article II of the US Constitution creates by requiring the president to be a “natural born citizen”, writing that this restriction makes the US an outlier compared to most other liberal democracies which do not use a hierarchy of citizenship in determining eligibility for elected or appointed leaders.