Bill Maher is making the “outrageous” case that America can welcome immigrants without surrendering the basic cultural values that define the country.
During Friday's episode of HBO's "Real Time," Maher argued that immigrants should be free to maintain their traditions, religion, and heritage — but that immigration also comes with an expectation of assimilation into some fundamental American norms.
“If you want the American dream, you have to take the American values,” Maher said.
Great monologue by Bill Maher. I don’t agree with Bill Maher usually. He is too naive for someone who has a lot of life experience but I agree with him tonight. If you come to America you MUST assimilate to Americas core values or you are not welcome here. pic.twitter.com/rfEtdIEryC
— American Alpha (@AmericanAlphaX) August 15, 2026
What a novel thought. Unfortunately, it is one that the current crop of DSA radicals who have taken over the country wholeheartedly reject.
If you span the gamut from Ilhan Omar to Rashida Tlaib to Zohran Mamdani to Abdul El-Sayed, then you are struck by the open hostility that many foreigners have toward the United States of America.
But true to his “voice of reason” schtick, Maher didn't spare either political party in making his argument, saying both Democrats and Republicans have taken immigration policy too far in opposite directions. People should realize that this is a persuasion device.
“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.”
Maher suggested that something has changed in recent years, with at least some immigrants rejecting the traditional expectation that newcomers adapt to the country they chose to join.
We saw this recently in Texas, when the “Wudu ablution stations” were a bridge too far for Texans, and Governor Abbott went so far as to call them illegal. Dallas Fort Worth Airport subsequently announced that the project to put them in bathrooms had been canceled.
READ MORE: DFW Airport Cancels Muslim Foot-Washing Stations in Stunning Development After TX Gov. Stance
“Now, most immigrants still want to assimilate, but some now have this other attitude of, ‘Melting pot? F— you, you melt,” Maher said, cracking a joke. “Look, you don’t have to love everything about America. We don’t. That’s why Yelp was invented.”
Maher stressed that assimilation doesn't mean abandoning every part of your cultural heritage.
“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 Maher insisted there is a line. His basic test was whether immigrants accept Western civilization and the liberal values that come with it.
“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.
Maher then got considerably more specific about what he considers non-negotiable.
“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.”
Maher's framing drew criticism from Nicole Kreisberg, an assistant professor in Penn State's School of Public Policy and Department of Sociology. Kreisberg argued that the history of American immigration has actually involved considerably stronger pressure to assimilate than Maher's description of the "melting pot" suggests.
“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 argued that immigrants have historically faced substantial social and economic pressure to adopt American customs, particularly the English language.
“Throughout history, the U.S. 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 U.S. careers, they often must speak English.”
She also argued that assimilation has not worked identically for every immigrant group, pointing to the experiences of Irish and Italian immigrants and contrasting them with more recent immigrants who may remain visibly identifiable 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.”
“In other words, no matter how much they try to assimilate, they may continue to face discrimination based on their skin tone,” she said.
This is a tired argument. First of all, I find it a mischievous argument that leftists continue to overestimate the power of American culture. After all, the Hollywood left has spent generations tearing the country down with critical theory. "The Odyssey" film may be the watershed moment when it became unmistakably clear that the left is actively trying to destroy Western Civilization.
Secondly, what about the “discrimination” that foreigners bring with them — about Christians, about Jews, about women, about conservatives, about gays? The left pretends that it’s only white males that can be biased, when actually the bigotry of leftist groups is blatant, unapologetic, and culturally out in the open. It is, therefore, far more pernicious.
For Maher, that presented a contradiction within modern progressive politics. He accused parts of the left of viewing “everything as oppressor versus oppressed, but can’t see who actually does a lot of oppressing.”
That is the crux of the issue: America has been a free country because of its culture.
“Diversity” has always existed within an understanding of Americans having shared values, such as religious tolerance, individual rights, and civil society.
When “diversity” becomes a catchphrase to justify importing tens of millions of people hostile to those values, then it becomes an existential threat to the nation.
Assimilation should be non-negotiable. But when radical Democrats are trying to balkanize the country instead of bring it together, we shouldn’t be surprised when “assimilation” becomes a foreign concept to them.
The heart of Maher's argument is that foreigners should embrace becoming Americans. It used to be the common understanding among all Americans just a generation ago. But just like everything else the left touches, suddenly, Americans are expected to no longer care about preserving their country and are supposed to turn over their country to whatever foreigners show up — no questions asked.
We are no longer accepting millions of immigrants with the expectation that they strengthen America. We are accepting them because one political party wants to turn our country into "Not America."
That is what has changed. And it is why Americans should put a stop to all immigration until we can reform our broken institutions. We could call it... "Make America Great Again."
