Leadership Quote by Gary Ackerman

The line tries to sound like a bridge, but it’s really a fence with a welcome sign on it. “I’m in favor of immigration” signals cosmopolitan decency, the kind of baseline affirmation a mainstream politician needs to say out loud to avoid being filed with the nativists. Then comes the pivot word that does the real work: “but.” In political English, “but” isn’t a conjunction so much as a permission slip, inviting the listener to hear restriction without hearing prejudice.

“Rules” is the master euphemism here. It’s vague enough to mean fairness and order (who could be against rules?) while leaving room for anything from visa quotas to expanded enforcement. That ambiguity is the point: it lets pro-immigration voters hear pragmatism and skeptical voters hear toughness, all without specifying what policies would actually follow. The phrase also shifts the moral center of gravity away from migrants’ stories and toward the state’s authority, reframing immigration as a management problem rather than a human one.

Context matters: Ackerman was a New York Democrat from a city built by immigration, but also a politician operating in an era when “border security” became the mandatory chaperone to any sympathetic talk about newcomers. The intent is coalition maintenance - to keep the humane posture while insulating it against the attack line that Democrats want “open borders.” Subtext: compassion, conditional on control; welcome, contingent on compliance.