Comedian Bill Maher argued Friday that immigrants must assimilate to American culture and accept certain fundamental values like gay rights, women’s equality and free speech, saying those principles are “not White values,” but liberal ones.During his latest episode of HBO’s “Real Time,” Maher blasted both sides of the political spectrum for their approach to immigration within the country — adding that there is “no doubt” that Democrats and Republicans “went to extremes.”
“If you want the American dream, you have to take the American values,” he said.
However, a public policy professor at Penn State University told Fox News Digital that Maher had it wrong.
“Biden’s policy of open doors, and then Trump’s policy of broken windows,” Maher continued. “Now, I’m on the page of America doing what it used to do so well — stealing hard-working, talented immigrants from around the world and making them Americans.”
He went on to point to his belief that “something has changed” in the attitude of those immigrating to the United States who may no longer believe they should adapt to western cultural standards.
“Now, most immigrants still want to assimilate, but some now have this other attitude of, ‘melting pot? F— you, you melt,” Maher said, while cracking a joke. “Look, you don’t have to love everything about America. We don’t. That’s why Yelp was invented.”
“But, you know, if you do get past ICE, America’s actually pretty cool,” he continued. “We say, ‘You do you.’ Eat the food your grandma cooked. Speak another language at home. Celebrate religious holidays. We welcome your food, your art, your fashion, your first ladies.”
But according to Maher, the price of immigration comes with a cost.
“But you have to answer one question: Do you like Western civilization? Because that’s what we are. And that’s not negotiable,” he said.
“Honor killings, not letting women show their faces, polygamy, cousin f–king, female genital mutilation — there’s lots of stuff we don’t do here, and it’s non-negotiable,” Maher said. “And it’s not ‘White values.’ These are liberal values. People fought and died to establish them. And it’s not racist to say if you want to come here to help form a more perfect union, great. But some things are too fundamental to change.”
But the framing itself drew pushback from Nicole Kreisberg, an assistant professor in the School of Public Policy and the Department of Sociology at Penn State, who told Fox News Digital that Maher had the country’s history backward.
“In my view, Maher makes it seem as if America is built on a foundation of the ‘melting pot,’ rather than on ‘assimilation,'” Kreisberg said. “To me, America is built on an attitude of ‘assimilate or don’t come.'”
Kreisberg said that immigrants from all countries have historically been expected to assimilate to American culture, with harsh cultural consequences for those who either fail or cannot manage to do so.
“Throughout history, the US state has actually built up systems to discourage immigrants from pursuing this ‘melting pot’ strategy,” Kreisberg told Fox News Digital. “Immigrants often face discrimination for speaking languages other than English in public; and for immigrants to advance in their US careers, they often must speak English.”
Kreisberg added that for over two centuries, immigrants who hailed from countries with a large European population fared better than those who arrived in the country as racial minorities“Immigrants past and present — such as Irish and Italians historically, or Chinese immigrants today — have sought to assimilate to avoid discrimination by changing their names to more ‘American’ ones, by adopting their food preferences for their children and by changing their political preferences,” Kreisberg said, adding, “But unlike was the case with Irish or Italians, who eventually did manage to assimilate to become ‘White’ Americans, contemporary immigrants are struggling because of pivotal differences in how they are racialized.” --->READ MORE HERE
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