A Cuban Immigrant on Why Assimilation Isn't Optional

Mike Gonzalez says the "Hispanic" box on your census form was invented by bureaucrats in 1977. In this interview, the Cuban-born Heritage fellow walks through how activists turned the promise of a colorblind society on its head, a Census Bureau that fought the new category for years before giving up, a Ford Foundation study where Mexican Americans were offended to be asked if they felt like victims, an activist he says described her hardest job as convincing happy immigrants that America hates them — and why he believes the long march through the institutions now has to be run in reverse. Coming from an immigrant himself, his argument isn't against immigration; it's that America stopped asking immigrants to become American.

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00:00 – Why a Cuban-born immigrant says assimilation is a necessity 01:30 – How affirmative action turned the promise of a colorblind society on its head 05:22 – Why activists lobbied for a "Hispanic" category until OMB caved in 1977 07:49 – Mexican Americans were offended to be asked if they felt like victims 10:23 – Why Marxists gave up on the patriotic worker and turned to race 14:24 – The long march through the institutions hasn't failed, it's winning 16:04 – Bernie Sanders once called open borders a Koch brothers conspiracy 18:36 – Why did Joe Biden throw the border open in 2021? 21:26 – Settlers, immigrants and the "brutal and necessary bargain" of assimilation 24:21 – Gonzalez's Americanization classes in 1970s Queens and the elite that ended them 28:43 – What "a better world is possible" really means: gulags and bread lines 32:32 – Vet visa applicants' social media 37:52 – What culture actually means, from Ben Franklin to the Ten Commandments 40:46 – Every institution has been captured, so run the long march in reverse

This is Episode 584 of Making the Argument, published September 22, 2026. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices