Will Cain Country - Is the Somali Immigration Debate Just History Repeating Itself? (ft Prof. Tyler Anbinder)

Episode Date: February 19, 2026

From the Irish to the Italians, America has received waves of immigrants from nearly every inhabited continent at some point and just about all of them faced significant discrimination upon their arrival. With current discourse now focused on Somali, Muslim, and Indian migrants, an uncomfortable question arises: Were these the same conversations people had about our ancestors? Professor of History at George Washington University Tyler Anbinder joins Will to go over America’s storied relationship with immigration, explaining why Irish-Americans faced so much discrimination, and how they gradually came to be accepted. Plus, Will and The Crew weigh in on the discussion with Professor Anbinder and share their own thoughts on whether today’s immigration debate reflects the past. Subscribe to ‘Will Cain Country’ on YouTube here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Watch Will Cain Country!⁠⁠⁠ Follow ‘Will Cain Country’ on X (⁠⁠⁠@willcainshow⁠⁠⁠), Instagram (⁠⁠⁠@willcainshow⁠⁠⁠), TikTok (⁠⁠⁠@willcainshow⁠⁠⁠), and Facebook (⁠⁠⁠@willcainnews⁠⁠⁠) Follow Will on X: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@WillCain⁠  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Somalis in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Indians in Dallas, Fort Worth, Muslims in New York City. Is this different, or is this a story that we've seen before? Italians, Jews, Germans, and Irish. The immigration waves across the history of America with a professor of his. history from George Washington University and a consultant to the gangs of New York. Wilcane Country at the Wilcane Country YouTube channel, the Wilcane Facebook page, always available for you to follow at Spotify or on Apple. A few months ago, as we analyzed the Somali assimilation integration and immigration into Minnesota, on our daily pre-show call, Two-A-Days Dan, Tinfoil, Pat, Frank.

Ron, myself, just talk, just think, just throw ideas against the wall. And one of the things that occurred is that America and its history is littered with waves of immigration from various parts of the world. It's often said, almost as a cliche, that America is a nation of immigrants, but that is not exactly true because America is originally a nation of settlers, acknowledging, I think, there is a base culture, a base people, they lay the foundation of America, and then come the immigrants,

and then come the waves, then come the Irish, then come the Scots-Irish, then come the Germans and the Jews and the Italians and the Puerto Ricans, the Indians, and the Muslims. And it makes you wonder are the conversations that we're having today, Part of a larger conversation we've had consistently throughout the history of America. What is the difference between Somalis in Minnesota and the Irish of the early 1800s?

So two a day, Dan, tinfoil, Pat, Fran, Ron and myself said, let's do that. Let's dive in. Let's look at the various immigration waves. Let's talk about the Italians in the early 1900s. Let's talk about the Puerto Ricans in the mid-1900s. Let's talk about the Irish from Martin Scorcian. Corsese's Gangs of New York. And so today, I'm excited to have a conversation with Professor of History at George Washington University, the author of Plinifle Country, The Great Potato Famine, and the Making of the Irish in New York,

who was a consultant on Corsese's Gangs of New York. I'm happy to have this conversation with Professor Tyler Arbender. Professor, great to have you here today on Wilcane Country. Thanks for having me, Will. I'm excited to talk to you about this. I'm excited to talk about the history of the Irish and to compare it to the conversations that we're having today and that we've had consistently throughout America. Let's start with that very broad question. Do you think the conversations we're having today about Somalis and Muslims is the very same conversation that we've had about Italians and Irish?

They are pretty much the exact same conversations. It's really striking as a historian. to see it. You know, because the same questions are raised. They're questions like, are these people really trying to assimilate? Can they really be true Americans? Do they have what it takes to succeed in the United States? Are they willing to assimilate and become part of American culture? And so the same things are asked today about the Somalis in Minnesota that we asked about the Irish 175 years ago. The fact that we've had that conversation on repeat through various immigration waves, before we dive into sort of the history of the Irish, which is what I want to do with you here today, I want to dive in deep and get granular on the history of the Irish and America.

But the fact, Professor, that we've had those conversations repeatedly. In your mind, do you think that invalidates the conversation? Do you think the answer is always the same? Is the answer the same for the Irish as it is for the Somalis? So I don't think it invalidates the questions, but I think the fact that we keep asking these questions shows that the answers aren't always what we immediately think they are. Because the answer for the Irish 175 years ago that was given by most Native-born Americans was no. The Irish can't possibly become good Americans. They're too Catholic, right? So America, 175 years ago, overwhelmingly Protestant.

And Protestants and Catholics didn't see eye to eye on anything back then. They thought, you know, Protestants and Catholics fought wars in those days. And so the idea that Catholics become true Americans seemed completely impossible. And then the fact that the Irish had lived, you know, had come from so much poverty. America had never had an immigrant group that was so impoverished before the famine Irish come. And so, no, I think the questions are great. questions to ask, but I think history helps us see that in the at the moment, we don't always get the, we don't always see the answer that's going to come.

I think that's a very fair answer. That we can't live with a short-term memory, we can't live too trapped by the president. We have to be able to look at what happens over the long arc. But what we do hope happens over the long arc, Professor, is that we do hope, I think it's fair to say that most people in America, acknowledging the existence of an American culture and having some pride in that American culture is that we hope over the long arc of that view that these various waves assimilate into America, that buy into the idea of being American. So I'm going to ask you a question that I don't know that you will answer, but you may find a way. And that is, has that answer come back with varying degrees of success? Have there been immigration waves that have answered those questions of Americans?

Absolutely, yes, wanted to and became and assimilated into America, where there is in others, where the answer, if not no, is much closer to not yet. So the answer is not really. So the thing that happens as Native-born Americans like you and me, we look at immigrants and we say, they're not assimilating at all. But to the immigrants, they're assimilating a lot. And what we as Native-born Americans don't realize is how hard the process of assimilating is. You can't just snap your finger and all of a sudden lose your foreign accent. You just can't snap your finger and all of a sudden want to eat hot dogs and apple pie instead of whatever you ate in the place where you were born.

And so assimilation is a slow, hard process. And we as Native-born Americans tend to want it to happen really fast. and that's the same thing that Americans said about the Irish 175 years ago. Why aren't they assimilating? Why are they living in these enclaves with each other and they never socialized with anybody else and they're singing their same old songs. And when they use the term home,

they're talking about Ireland and not America. Why do these things happen? But, you know, I think we would all agree that the Irish became pretty good Americans. And so every generation of Americans, thinks their immigrants don't assimilate fast enough. But in the end, we tend to see that they do. At least that's been the case with every group that's come to America so far. Okay. So that's been the case with every group has come to America so far. And there is a deeper,

I think, more philosophical and cultural conversation about whether or not those immigrant groups have assimilated into America or America has assimilated into those immigrant groups. And that's a question of values and more is on priorities. And I think that's where that's where. of discussion and examination on each and every single immigration group. But before we dive maybe into that, and we can return to towards the end of our conversation, now let's do this. Now let's talk about the Irish. And we're here with Professor Tyler Anbender.

I certainly said Arbender a little bit earlier, but it's Professor Anbender from George Washington University. And my apologies for the mispronunciation of your name, Professor. But, okay, the Irish. Let's just start with history. When did the Irish come to America? Well, Irish were coming to America even before the United States existed. There was emigration from there before that. But most of the Irish were too poor to come to America in the period before the American Revolution,

really before the war of 1812. But after the war of 1812 is over, the number of Irish coming to America increases fairly rapidly. but then so that they're the biggest immigrant group in the United States in the you know 20 30 years before the civil war but then starting in 1845 there's this huge blight that kills the potato crop in Ireland and the Irish had become exceedingly poor because of a number of factors in particular in particular the the exploitation of Ireland by the British and so by 1845 half of Ireland's population is eating only potatoes, potatoes for breakfast, potatoes for lunch, potatoes for dinner. And so when the potato crop is destroyed by a mysterious fungus that afflicts the potato crops, it's a huge tragedy. And out of 8 million Irish inhabitants in 1845, about a million of them die, and another

million and a half of them flee Ireland, and most of them come to the United States. So you have this huge influx of refugees from this famine in the 1840s and 1850s. Okay, and let's talk about what America looked like when the Irish arrived. I know that you had a conversation with one of my producers before you joined me here today, and you guys talked about the concept of the Scots-Irish. And the Scots-Irish is a term that is commonly used in America to talk about what we may refer to as some of the original, the ethnic background of some of the original Americans,

Tell me if you think this is a mischaracterization, but the original European settlers in America came largely from the English and what we call the Scots-Irish. Now, the Scots Irish are not Irish. They are Scots, and this is where you can correct me if I get this characterization wrong, but they are Scots who were Protestants who fled to Ulster County, Ireland, lived in Northern Ireland, later day manifested into the troubles and the fact that still to this day, Northern Ireland is more Protestant, while Ireland is more Catholic. But those Scots-Irish, wasn't what we call them just Scots or Scots-Irish, are the immigrant wave that largely instead of coming through Ellis Island, like many other immigration waves, came through places like Virginia and settled the South and pushed into the interior of Kentucky and ultimately into places like Texas. So is it fair to say that when the Irish arrived, what they met was an existing American ethnic base of English and Scots-Irish? Well, it kind of depended where you went. So the eastern seaboard would have been more multi-ethnic, and the interior like you're describing would have been less so.

But no, the only thing I would add, your characterization is definitely accurate as far as it goes. What I would add is, though, that by the time that you're pushing into the interior places that you're talking about, there are already lots of immigrants from Scotland and lots of immigrants from Ireland, as part of that push into the interior, you know, places like Kentucky and Tennessee and western Pennsylvania and so forth. So, yeah, and then the term Scots-Irish, historians tend not to use that much these days because the Irish tend not to use it. That's a term that really is developed in America, and in particular it becomes used a lot in the 19th century because the Protestants from Ireland want to distinguish themselves from the

the Catholics from Ireland who were so reviled by so many Protestant Americans. And so that's like, well, I'm not Irish. I'm Scott's Irish. And that's a term Americans will use to say, you know, I'm not one of those Catholics. Don't lump me in with them. Let's take a quick break, but continue this conversation on Irish migration and assimilation, how it compares to the debate today with Professor of History at George Washington, Tyler Anbender, on Will Kane Country. This is Ainsley Earhart. Thank you for joining me for the 52 episode. podcast series, The Life of Jesus.

A listening experience that will provide hope, comfort, and understanding of the greatest story ever told. Listen and follow now at Fox News Podcasts.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome back to Will Kane Country. We're still hanging out with Professor Tyler Enbender, who's a professor of history at George Washington, has written several books on the Irish Immigration to America, consulted on the gangs of New York. But there was a difference between what we call the Scots-Irish and the Irish, and it wasn't just their ethnic divide, right? I mean, the Scots-Irish were actually, others call them

the Ulster Irish or the Ulster Scots. They were from Scotland. Were they not? They were not Irish. They were Scots who got pushed out of Scotland or recruited to go to Northern Ireland to bring Protestantism. And they came in a separate wave, did they not, from the rest of the Irish? Well, so there it's a question of definition. So if a Scotsman goes from Scotland to Ireland in the early 1600s, and then their great grandkid comes to America, the question is, what do you call them? Do you call them Irish, or do you call them Scots-Irish? So, right? So that's the question is by the time those people are coming to a- Can I-May I answer that? Sure. May I answer that or try to address that? Isn't that a question

kind of in what we're getting at in some of these large? Isn't that a question of culture? Were they Scott in culture or were they Irish in culture? You know, they were Protestants and not Catholics. So I asked that to you, isn't that a definition based upon, yes, in some ways ethnic, but in many ways cultural? Right. And that culture is made up of things like religion, which are pointing to, which is definitely going to be a divide between the Protestant Irish and the Catholic Irish. but then, you know, those Scots who go to Ireland and live there 100, 150 years are going to pick up a lot of Irish culture before they then come to America. So the answer is we're both right in a sense. It's just very complicated.

Right. Right. But back to the question, whatever we call them, those Northern Irish, those Scots Irish, those Ulster County Irish, they did come, I believe, in a different wave than the Irish that we're talking about writ larger. It's not that they came in a different wave. It's they came first, and then they continue coming to the United States even later and even during the famine. So the Ulster Irish are always coming to America. It's just they are the first Irish to come to America. And then eventually they're outnumbered by the Irish and the other three quarters of Ireland who come to America. Why did they come? I mean, we know why the English came, the English come. They set up their settlements.

They set up the original colonies. What started pushing the Northern Irish, the Scots Irish, to, America? You told us about the famine that pushed the greater, larger Irish wave, but what pushed the original Scott Irish Wave? You know, really the same thing that pushes most immigrants to the United States, the desire to have a better life, the knowledge that in the United States upward mobility was greater than it was in the place where they were living. And the skills that the Ulster Irish had were in great demand in the United States. There's lots of weaving industry. You know, when I say industry, I mean home industry at the point we're talking about,

but lots of weaving and linen making and so forth. And there's great demand for that in the United States. And they hear, hey, I can go to the United States and I can make 50% more doing my job than I can here in Ireland. And I can buy land and own a house and I can't afford that here in Ireland. And so that's what pushes people to the United States. when they arrived I am fairly interested in I know I know that historians reject the term Scots-Irish but there's got to be some term

otherwise we're left floundering around how we distinguish these groups and maybe your point is they shouldn't be distinguished but you know as somebody from Texas whose family migrated through the South most of us down here it's not as ethnically diverse as it is up there in New York right it hasn't been for a long time

most people from in the South are either English or Scots-Irish because they are the people that we talked about became primarily, not exclusively, but primarily, the frontiersmen, the pioneers, the people that pushed west. But when they came, did they also encounter sort of a resistance to immigration? Not so much. Well, it depends, again, what period you're talking about, because these Northern Irish are coming to America ever since the late 1600s.

So, 1600s, 1700s, there's really no resistance to, to. immigration. There's so much land. There's so few people. It's only really when you start getting into the 19th century that some people start saying, hey, you know, maybe we have a few too many immigrants, though mostly what they say is not that we have too many, but we don't have, we have too many of the wrong kind is what people will say. Right. Really quickly, as an aside, I know that your specialty is in part, the Irish. Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave this very fascinating speech at the Munich Security Conference where he talked about the relationship between Europe and America, and he had this passage where he said, you know, he said, I can't remember

everything correctly, but he said, you know, the Germans gave us our industrial workforce and our farming in the Midwest. The Dutch gave us New Amsterdam, which originally became New York. The Spanish gave us our cowboy culture, vicaro culture that ended up as cowboy culture. And he went through the different immigration waves and what they gave us. I'm curious, just because you brought up to 1,600,700s, why was there never, well, can I just ask you about those groups? It doesn't seem like the Dutch, while they had a presence in early America, never came in the great immigration waves of these other places. Why? What kept the Dutch home?

Well, so it's not that, so a couple of things. First, the Netherlands was relatively prosperous, and so you don't have as many poor people there. and so there's less reason to leave. And then the other thing is the Dutch leave to some extent, but they're a very small country, and so they make a very small presence in the places they go. And then when they immigrate, they go, right, the Dutch had their own colonies.

And so the Dutch go to different places. You know, they have New Amsterdam, but they have places in other parts of the world too. And so sometimes they'll go there. But mostly it's a size thing and it's a prosperity thing. And then one more just as a curiosity, the Germans. When did the German wave come to America? Was that mid-1800s, 1850s, 1860s? Exactly. Exactly. The big German emigration period is mid to late 1800s. And in fact,

you know, there is a fact most people don't know, but more Germans emigrate to the United States. Once it becomes the United States, more German immigrants come here than people from any other place in the world. Really? More than the Irish? Yeah. Oh, that's fascinating. Well, talk about, I guess, is that an assimilation that is so successful?

You barely even notice its existence? Like, what is that? I mean, we do know German influence. I mean, Rubio's right, like the beer magnates of the Midwest. Here in Texas, there's a fascinating little slice of history that I am intrigued by, where we have a German presence in central Texas, where they came in that same time period. There was an offer of free land. They became settlers well out into Comanche territory, lived at somewhat level of peace with hostile Indians.

And to this day, you've got Fredericksburg and New Braunfels and places like that in central Texas. But I don't think anybody realizes, like, to your point, the Germans came at such a large number. Yeah. And so it's interesting, you ask the assimilation part. But what basically happens is this. Up until 1914 or so, there isn't much assimilation at all. And people are, but with World War I, Germans all of a sudden say, hey, I've got to assimilate a lot if I'm going to be accepted here because Germany is the United States enemy in World War I. And so that creates a huge push to assembly.

And that's often what happens in American history. is groups assimilate when they feel forced to do so. They'll assimilate more. So all these, and Texas would have had it too, but Texas all across the United States, places that would have had German businesses that would have had German names, they changed their names. So for instance, I went to Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Interesting. I went to Fort Wayne, Indiana, and everything's named after Lincoln. And I'm like, why is everything here named after Lincoln? And they said, well, these things all used to be named after Germans, but in World War I, everything, the German businesses all wanted to look American, and so everything changed their names to Lincoln. Did they change their last names as well? Did we sort of, because, you know, there are obviously examples of Germans' last names in America,

but it doesn't reflect the quantity of the immigration wave, you just said. Correct. And that's one of the reasons we don't realize how many Germans there are in America, because there are lots of Schmits who became Smiths in the 19-teens and 1920s, because of the desire not to stand out as German. And so, right, lots of names are changed to be able to fit in more easily and not stand out as German. Oh, how interesting. Okay.

Let's go back to the Irish. So you're right. One of the fascinating things about the Irish today is that I would say, until you had this conversation with me about the Germans, you might say that the Irish are the most assimilated group into. America where now, and again, I think I have a different perspective and maybe a lot of people listening because of where I come from, I did live in New York for 15 years, and ethnic identity in New York is much a bigger part of your story than it is, say, in a place like Texas. And maybe that's because of what I said earlier, because everybody's out in the frontier lands

was basically either English or Scots-Irish. So if you're not indifferent, you don't wear your identity on your sleeve, your racial or ethnic identity on your sleeve. if you live in a place where everybody's super different, it becomes a point of pride or differentiation. But I live in New York and now like, oh yeah, I'm Irish. I'm like, wow, you know, everybody's Irish. But they're obviously Irish in their pride, maybe Irish in their last name, but not Irish in many other ways as indistinguishable from, as distinguishable from American. So that kind of depends on how you look at things. So, right, if you look at maybe the, the food people are eating or even the alcohol they're drinking or the kinds of, you know,

even the in culture in terms of movies you watch or plays you go to, sports you attend. There's lots of ways in which ethnic culture is present, but not necessarily out there for everyone to see. And so I think that there's ways in which ethnic groups kind of maintain those parts of their original culture without necessarily letting everybody see it. Yeah, but speaking specifically of the Irish, I'm just thinking if I go to, I mean, the city that is most synonymous with Irish to me is Boston. I mean, New York has a big Irish presence as well. like, if I meet an O'Hara in Boston, yeah, you may drink Guinness and what do you drink if you're Catholic? You don't drink, you drink, is it Bush?

What are the two with you? Jameson's if you're Catholic and Bush Mills, if you're Protestant. I don't know, maybe he makes a choice on which whiskey he drinks, but he's watching football, just like I'm watching football. Mm-hmm. Yep, that is absolutely true. Right. So, yeah, that is, yeah, there's no argument with that. And so, and that's the thing that, right, it's so it's, what I would say is this, it's not that you're not both watching football, it's that other little thing you might do that, you know, that an Irish family might have some tradition that is, that carries down from, from there.

Irish roots in terms of a food that you might cook on a special holiday or a church service you attend or or, or, and so forth. So there's parts of it that are still there. But yes, you're right. And the longer, the other factor, of course, is the longer in the United States, the more those traits from abroad fade away. And so since the Irish have been here a long time, those things have faded away more than they fade away. So, you know, my grandfather was an immigrant. Even for Italians.

Even for Italians. Yeah, it's faded away more than it has for Italians, which their wave comes in what, the early 1900s? Absolutely. Yeah, that's exactly right. So the more you are removed from the old country, the less of those traditions you're going to perhaps carry on. Let's take a quick break,

but continue this conversation on Irish migration and assimilation how it compares to the debate today. With Professor of History at George Washington, Tyler Anbender on Wilcane Country. It's the Golden Moment. Triumph on the podium, golden hand. But with Corona Serro, golden moments go beyond the Winter Olympics. They're enjoying sunsets, time outside, reconnecting with nature, and laughs shared with friends.

For every golden moment at the Winter Olympic Games, enjoy your own with Corona Serro, 0% alcohol and a source of vitamin D. Corona Serro, the official non-alcoholic beer of Milano Cortina, 2026. Welcome back to Will Kane Country. We're still hanging out with Professor Tyler Enbender, who's a professor of history at George Washington, has written several books on the Irish Immigration to America, consulted on the gangs of New York. Okay, so the Irish come over, as you mentioned, 18, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, potato famine. We get this great wave of Irish coming to America. I guess the best piece of fiction is the ones you consulted on, or it's not fiction.

I think it's based on real stories. but the gangs of New York. So I guess that's a pretty good illustration of the America they were received into. So tell me about what it was like for an I mean, tell me about the prejudice. Tell me about the worries about this big wave of Irish at the time in America. Well, where to start? There's a lot in there. So the Irish come during the potato famine, 1840s and 50s,

and it's just an unprecedented huge influx of immigrants. So, you know, you might, you know, when you lived in New York, you might have felt like, oh, there are a lot of immigrants in New York. And New York, when you lived there, was probably about one-third foreign-born like it is today. But by the time the Irish potato famine finishes, it's about, it's almost 55% foreign-born in New York. And some places in America, even more so. So if you think there are a lot of immigrants in America now, after the potato famine wave of refugees, it was much greater.

And then Germans are coming at the same time, and we hardly notice them because there's so many Irish coming. And then in terms of the reception, the reception is kind of mixed. There are a lot of Americans who think this is great. We need more people to fill up this country, so the British don't attack us again, and we can become a world power. On the other hand, there are other people who say, these immigrants, they want too much. They're trying to change our schools.

They're trying to change our culture. we don't want them to have so much political power in particular with something that a lot of native-born Americans thought. And so you have the biggest, the biggest most successful anti-immigrant political movement in all of American history, the No Nothing Party, which crops up in the 1850s in response to that Irish immigration. And so you get, and then there's quite a bit of prejudice, you know, newspaper ads say no Irish need apply. these are for jobs for domestic service and things like that. So there's quite a bit of prejudice that the Irish face, and they're very resentful of that.

What were these Irish like, by the way? You've mentioned several times that the groups that came to America, and this is why the Dutch didn't come, were poor, and the Dutch weren't as poor. So the people that are coming over, what are they? They're poor. Is it families? Is it single men?

Is it uneducated? Are they interested in work? Like, what is that initial wave of Irish? Sure. So what I should clarify, though, is when I talked about the Dutch, it's not that most immigrants were poor and the Dutch were not. It's that because in those days, it cost a lot of money to come to America. And you would be, and the trip, the trip took months, right, on a sailing ship. So you couldn't be poor and be an immigrant.

You had to be more middle class. So the people were coming to America from Northern Ireland. And those are people who are middle class who say, you know, I have a decent living here, but I could have a much better living in America. So what's new about the famine Irish is they're the first group that comes that is really, that has lots of dirt or people among them because they're fleeing famine. And so they're, you know, they're getting on ships. In those days you got on the ship, the ship would take five weeks to get to America.

You had to bring your own food. But a lot of the Irish get on with no food because, you know, that desperate. So the people who are coming to America from Ireland are the poorest people ever to land in the United States. They're not all poor, but a lot of them are. And then a lot of them get to the United States, even though they don't have the money to come because their relatives come to America first, then they save money, and they send ship tickets back to Ireland to bring their relatives over. In terms of the other demographics you asked about, it's typically young men and women in their 20s, that's the biggest group by far. Because if you're a family, right, if you're a big

Irish family, who are you going to, and you can scrape up money for one ticket? Who are you going to send first? You're going to send someone who's young and strong and can work hard and save money to bring other family members. So you send someone who's in their 20s and they either get a job as a day labor if they're a guy or a domestic servant, if they're a woman, and they save their money and they send money home to bring the next brother or sister over until all the brothers and sisters have come. And so it's mostly young people in their 20s, early 30s, late teens. Those are the people who mostly come to the United States. The older people are like, you know, this is too much for me.

I won't survive the passage. So it's really a young person's immigration. And the hostile reception to these Irish, how much of that had to do with the religious differences, that they were coming Catholic into what was primarily at the time a Protestant nation? It was overwhelmingly religious prejudice that was the cause of the hostility to them. Americans, you know, America was overwhelmingly Protestant more than 90 percent. And lots of Americans believed that Protestantism defined America, not Christianity, Protestantism specifically, and that Catholics could not make good Americans,

that Catholics would only do what their priests told them, that Catholics could lie and not feel any guilt because they could confess their sin to their priest. And so they believed that Catholics, these Americans believed that Catholics could not make good American citizens, that it was impossible for them to be good citizens and the country would be ruined with immigrants who were Catholics. And so this was a very strong prejudice that a lot of people believed. and it's the basis of most of the anti-Irish prejudice. And that lasts for well over 100 years, right? I mean, my mom would tell me about what a big deal it was when JFK was elected president,

that people had legitimate concerns in the 1960s, what it meant for the American president to be seen in some way as having fealty to the Pope. Right, right. Up until then, absolutely, that there was still a very strong belief that Catholics couldn't be independent of the Pope. You know, we didn't mention, by the way, Cain, very, very good Irish name, very common Irish name. Is it? I appreciate you. Absolutely. I appreciate you bringing that up.

It's actually one of those things. I'm not giving my DNA. I'm not giving my DNA to the internet, professor. I mean, God forbid some cousin of mine abscond with an 84-year-old woman in Arizona. My DNA in 23 and me is going to get him caught. That's clearly the case of what's going on. I joke. There are many.

There are many Keynes in my books of Irish America. I've looked that up. Is that an Irish name? Is it a Scottish, Scots Irish name? Is it an English name? You know, the research I have seen Kane come back as Irish, but I feel like it could be any of those three. It's a very Irish name. Okay.

I'm very Irish. Wow. The name is very Irish. All of a sudden for the Irish in this conversation. Right. So, okay. So, but let's talk about how the Irish escape this situation of second-class citizen. And you've already offered us the answer, at least in part, of time, and time adds to assimilation.

Assimulation, you become part of the greater American story and the greater American opportunity. But I think there were also some other mechanical things that actually still exist to this day. Again, I say things, you correct me where I'm wrong, but the Tammany Hall political machine, the voting block of the Irish, the municipal jobs that followed. And to this day, in the NYPD, I think there really is a strong contingent and the fire department and in New Jersey and so forth of Irish. There's a lot of Irish that are in those jobs. Absolutely. So you've raised a lot there. Let's see where to start.

So in terms of how the Irish kind of improve the... their status in America. I mean, the first thing is simply hard work, right? They work incredibly hard. The other thing that's really important is that the Irish immigrants, like all immigrants, are very entrepreneurial. They start small businesses at way above

the rate of native-born Americans. That's the case for all immigrant groups throughout American history, and it's especially the case for the Irish. So what the Irish do, they come to America, they start out with these, very menial jobs, day laborer, you know, scrubbing floors and taking care of children and cooking meals in someone's house. But then they start businesses, right? They save up, they save up some

money from those jobs, they save enough to start a business, and they become a grocer, they become a saloon keeper, they become all sorts of things. I have one of the canes in my book becomes a real estate developer. Now he gambles away his money, so that was a bad, that was a bad, that That was a bad thing for that cane. So all sorts of things that the Irish do. They start businesses. And entrepreneurship is the way to wealth in America. It was 175 years ago.

It probably is today. Right? That's the, you know, a salary is one thing. But you come up with a good product and you have a good way to sell it and you can make a lot of money. And that's what the Irish do. And so they become business owners. And in that way, they make more money. Then they take the profits from those businesses.

They buy real estate. They send their kids to college. And, you know, they kind of help write the American dream. And then in terms of the other part of what I said, Tamney Hall, municipal jobs, cops, firemen. Exactly. So that's part of it. And but it's a complicated story because so we associate the Irish with Tamany Hall. But the interesting thing is at first, the people who run Tamany Hall, they say to the Irish, well, we want your votes, but we're not giving you any power.

You come vote for us and we'll make sure, you know, you can have some jobs in the police force, later in the fire department. And those jobs are good, but those jobs are tiny, right? You've got maybe a thousand policemen and you've got hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrants in New York. And so the police are a well-known route. And these other civil service jobs are a well-known, you know, foothold out of poverty. but those are well-known but not really typical. But yeah, those are great jobs, and I talk a lot about those in my books

because, you know, a policeman earns not only a good salary, but it's a very steady one. You're not going to get laid off, and you're going to have a lot of, and you're never going to be out of work because of bad weather. Okay, I just realized I could go on talking to you about this, probably for two hours, that you have a class to teach.

You're going to have to go in about 17, 10 minutes or so. So let me just hit a couple of things for you. The thing you tell me about the Germans is fascinating. Do you find an assimilation with these various ways that it's a gradual process or these great leaps in assimilation? And I even think about the Irish in this respect. One of the books that I really loved reading was the Westies. It's about the Irish gangs of, you know, Hell's Kitchen, the west side of New York. And as recently as the 1970s and 80s, that was an identifiable ethnic gang. Irish gang. And that doesn't exist in New York today. So over the last 30, 40 years, that kind of has gone away. And I'm just wondering the assimilation process. Is it gradual or are these big similar

moments like with the Germans that force assimilation? So in, you know, 95% of the cases, it's going to be gradual. It's going to be the kind of thing you see with Italians living in little Italy's where you know you have Italian immigrants when they come to a place like New York who can live their whole adult lives and and never speak anything but Italian and so for most groups the Irish Italians Eastern European Jews assimilation is gradual the two differences are first children so if a child immigrates and they go to school that assimilation is really fast because school accelerates the assimilation process a great deal. And then the other example you tend to get of fast assimilation,

which is, again, very much exceptional, is these national events that somehow push things much faster. So World War I, pushing the Germans to assimilate all of a sudden really fast, whereas before Germans had sent their kids to German language schools and so forth to try to resist assimilate, not resist, but to slow it, to keep their ethnicity, but then with World War I, they say, not, we can't do that anymore. We've got to prove we're American and undo those trappings of our birthplace. So mostly slow, but every once in a while faster, with children in particular.

Okay. My last two questions for you. So we've talked about the Irish. We've seen the history of the Irish. We've touched on the Germans. We touched on the Italians. After the Italians come, I believe if I'm doing this chronologically, the Eastern European Jews in roughly the same time period as the Italians in that early 1900s, late 1800s.

Then you got to Puerto Ricans, which come in the 1930s and 40s. Among those groups, do you see the same story playing out, or is there differences in their ability and rate of assimilation? You know, the only group that really assimilates faster than any other group in American immigration history that I can think of are English immigrants, right? So the English very quickly kind of become American in a way that no other group does, not even the Scots. And you think, oh, how different are the Scots from the English? But it turns out they are and they have more pride and they have a lot of pride in their ethnic differences. So, so yeah, most groups, it's very similar. That's the thing

You look at, you know, I wrote a book looking at New York immigration history from the Dutch all the way to the present. And the same story tends to play itself out over and over again. And every generation thinks, these immigrants are different. And it turns out you look at them a generation later and they go, oh, they weren't so different as we thought. So, so yeah, that's... Except what this is, so this would be my final question, except the one commonality that all of those outside of the Eastern European Jews, and they also do to, to some extent, share is a common, some sense of a common cultural background of Western civilization. And this is where the Jews are different, I believe in the same religious structure.

Although different ways to do it, Catholic, Protestant, it's a Christianity-based immigration way, the Italians, the Puerto Ricans, all of them. Even today, if we looked at the Latino migration from Mexico and Central America, you would say that a lot of those same similarities exist to the existing population. You might have language differences, you might have cultural differences, but there is some common bond. Maybe the Central Americans and the Mexicans are different

in that they don't come from the Western civilizational cultural background as the Europeans. What I'm curious about is, are these all lessons in that commonality? Because when we talk about immigrant waves from Muslim countries or Somalis, we're now pulling

from what I would argue is a very different background and putting it into the same story. I totally understand what you're saying. And I can't say that you're wrong. What I can say is that in earlier generations of American history, people looked at what you're saying now are similarities of previous immigrants and didn't see those similarities. They said Catholicism and Protestantism, totally incompatible. Either one is going to win or the other is going to win. They looked at Jews, they said, Jews are completely

incompatible. And yet, I would argue, Jews have made pretty good Americans. And so every generation seems to think that the newest immigrants are completely different. And I totally see, you know, what you're saying makes perfect sense. And yet at the time, people didn't say that. People said the Irish are incapable of becoming Americans. And yet, I think they did. Really, really fascinating. Thank you for that deep dive in history. It's something I'm endlessly curious about. And I do need to read your book, which I'm excited to do. And I know you got class in 15 minutes, Professor, but I really appreciate you spending some 45 minutes with us today to talk about something that you probably talk about every day inside your classes. But thank you so much, Professor Tyler Anbender.

Thanks so much for having me on. I really appreciate it. Let's take a quick break, but we'll be right back on Will Cain Country. All right, there he goes. Professor of History at George Washington University. His book is Plentiful Country, The Great Potato Famine, and the Making of the Irish of Irish, of Irish, New York. He also wrote City of Dreams and nativism and slavery. Two of a day's Dan Tenfold Pact. So you guys come in

real quick because you guys just yeah you guys just texted me and said can we please talk about this after he comes out and gets off. So you're into that because I'm in and he's a professor and he's soft spoken and he's very professorial right but I don't know where the audience is on this. We do have some comments and I want to hear what they

have to think. But I really truly I was so curious that I was unorganized. Sometimes organization structures my curiosity, but sometimes when I'm so curious, I'm all over the place. And, like, I'm just so curious about this. Now, the professor, true, I think,

he's very, I think the argument would be he was open-minded or understanding of points of view on this and doesn't invalidate or, I mean, he's written, I'm curious what nativism and slavery is about. He may have thought that my point of view or the one that I was forwarding, at least in this conversation, is nativist.

And I would argue... That he thought... Well, I would argue guilty as charged. Yeah, well, I am nativist. So what are you going to do? I think I believe in America, a common culture, and I am skeptical of people that come in, and in many ways... How about this? Incompatibility is one thing.

Antagonism is another. Okay. And I do think that there's some concerns about antagonism, a rejection of the American culture, a rejection of the American idea, a lack of desire to become American. Now, he would say to me, well, that's the same thing that people said about the Irish or the Italians or whatever it may be, and he'd be right, maybe. And maybe over the long hark of history, he's right. And so 100 years we look up from now, and Somalis are every bit of apple pie as, you know, everyone else in America. Maybe he's right. But, you know, I do think there's very legitimate concerns about cultural,

Look, Western civilization and I don't know that there is a success. What is the best experiment in an Islamic-based population country of maintaining Western ideals, Western civilizational values? What is it? Like, who is the closest? I mean, at one point Iran? I don't know. At one point Iran, maybe? 70s, Iran?

Maybe one of the South, I mean, would you argue like, is Singapore, Singapore's Muslim, right? Would you say that's the closest you can get to embracing capitalism, I guess? Sure. I don't know. It's hard. It's hard. Because the things that what, no, I mean, please, people would not argue that Saudi Arabia has the same values as America. Ask, well, ask a woman.

You know. But I don't know. It's a longer conversation that's sort of not debate, but challenge. See, I feel like the professor is very mathematical and therefore correct that two plus two is always equaled four in America. But what happens when you interject a new integer? Is it always the same as in the past? Because the formula has always been this way in the past, is it always this way in the future? Go ahead, tinfoil.

I will say that he is right in that. immigrants tend to be entrepreneurial. And even Somali immigrants are entrepreneurial. If you look at how well they've been able to come into America and make a lot of money and, you know, not legally. Have success. Right. Right.

Go ahead. No. My question was, you'll get to the last comment, but what is the kind of, what is it? Is it like history repeating itself or is this something new? Do you think the professor gave your answer? Let's do this sequentially, chronologically. Tell me, now it's a bunch of non-experts, the three of us talking, right, on this. If you go in order of immigration wave, would you say the Irish have most assimilated into America among the ethnic group?

So if you take Irish and Italian, which one is more assimilated into the greater common? common cultural blend of America. Would it be Irish or would it be Italian? Italians separate themselves. I think that's fair. And that's 100 years later, right? The Italians come, whatever, 70 to 100 years after the Irish. Would you say the Italians are more integrated into the more common American culture than, say, Puerto Ricans? Yes, because they love America.

They have a flag. And Italians. and Italians come a good, what, 40, 50 years before the Puerto Ricans, right? And so his argument would be give that time and everything follows the same path. The Germans more than the Italians. The Irish more than the Germans, more than the Italians. Well, that part of the conversation to me was incredibly fascinating. My family changed our last name because of that.

Yeah. That's an assimilation that is so complete in total that you don't. even know it existed. You know what I mean? Like changing your last name and dropping the business and the language because of those wars, it's, that's fascinating. I mean, here, let's head over to Facebook. Esauzalvarez says, good dialogue, but I think Islam is where the so-called assimilation takes a real turn for the worse. And Patrick, you know, I said this. By the way, on the Italian front, Ray Touchstone says they didn't speak Italian on everyone loves Raymond they assimilated. I thought that's funny.

Yeah. What was I going to say? I forgot what I was going to say about what the professor said. The religion and assimilation? Yeah. I mean, this conversation really opened my eyes. The point that he. Same.

But the point that he made about the Protestants thought the Catholics was a zero-sum game. One was right. One was wrong. And they could not coexist. And you're saying the same thing, essentially, about Christians and Muslims. You know, kind of that's what he was saying, right? Here's where the logic fails on that for me. You're right about what people said.

But what people say is not necessarily a reflection of objective truth. There is an objective truth that exists beyond what people say or how they perceive their world. So the people at the time that believed Catholicism and Protestantism could not coexist were wrong. The truth was it could, right? So the people today that are concerned about whether or not Islam and the West can coexist aren't necessarily wrong. They're not necessarily right. There is a truth that will play itself out. And what we all have to say about it is wholly separate than what.

that truth is. And the way that we can get to that truth is to look at the experiments that I'm talking about. You see what I'm saying? Is to look at Islam's ability. Like, if you'd have looked back, the Catholics weren't having trouble. I mean, I think this is historically accurate, accepting the values of Western tradition. They were a part of Western tradition. So even though the people at the time thought, oh, this is going to be a problem, what we now can see in retrospect is, no, the Catholics were adherence to Western civilization, proponents of Western civilization. Hell, they helped create Western civilization, right? So it wasn't going to be as hard as the people at the time thought it. But Islam is a whole different calculus, and doing that calculus is totally independent

upon what people think at the time. And it could be, this experiment is just way different. I think I'm right about this. All of those waves, every single one of those waves, we will take out, for different reasons, the Eastern European Jews, the Puerto Ricans, and the Latinos, the Mexican, the Central Americans. The rest of those waves come from Europe. Come as children of Western civilization. They come from a common culture or common values, not in every way, not in the food, not these things, but a core set of beliefs that they share, right? Now, I say, I separate those three groups out because the Jews had a different religious background than the rest of those waves. The Puerto Ricans and the Mexican and Central Americans come not from the Western civilizational tradition.

So it's important to ask, hey, if you have these differences, can you work in the greater common culture? Can it be compatible? I don't think that's just fair. I think that's necessary to ask. Go ahead, two days. And them thinking that Catholicism and Protestantism were so different back then because they weren't, you know, around other religions that were so completely different like we are now. So it seems so different then. But realistically, it wasn't that far away.

They're the same savior. They have the same book. That's exactly right. You know, it's completely different. That's like Texans and Oklahomans thinking that they can't go to the same bar. Right. In the grand scuba thing, if you just, if you just. you know, pull the microscope out a little bit, you realize, oh, these people are the same.

Yeah. They're exactly the same. You compare to everybody else. But now Islam and, you know, Protestantism, Catholic Christianity is so vastly different in culture and in religion. You've pulled the microscope way out. Way out. You've pulled the microscope way out. Colleen Catherine says, proud to be Irish American, my grandparents and great-grandparents came here on ships.

By the way, based on that comment right there, could I just ask something? I find it fascinating that what you said, and you've said this before, that I'm from the Northeast, and people's identities become where their ancestry is from all the time. Is that not? More so. Is that not the case where you guys are from? Because it's like people always talk about their Irish culture, their Italian heritage constantly. It becomes their second identity. No.

It's wild. No. It's so crazy. Would you say the same thing in Florida, Patrick? Yeah, we don't talk. I mean, I live in a Navy town, so we don't. What? I'm literally talking.

Did you turn me down again? We lost you. No, you meet yourself. No, your talk. Go ahead. Listen, I do, I wear a lot of hats here. I have to play it to the show. I have to book.

People text me. I have to like, my goodness. Anyway. Will, we're putting too much on him, Will. Fired up, Patrick. I'm about to snap, I swear. It's probably because you're Irish. No, I'm kidding.

That's great. It's just great. is. And Scottish and all those things. Are you Irish? What are you? What are you, Patrick? I believe German, Irish, and Scottish.

And maybe some English or Welsh. See, okay, it's a couple of things, Dan. It is, it is, okay, I said it to the professor. It's because, I'm going to set Patrick aside for a minute because I think he's, there's a couple of reasons and Patrick and my reasons might be different. because most of the people that went south, okay? Most of the people that went to Kentucky, Tennessee, then Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia's a little different, I think,

because Georgia was pretty English. And then on into Texas and pushed west, they were Scots-Irish. So if you're all the same, you stop talking about what you are. Sure. You see what I mean? Yeah. We're more of a melting pot where I am. The second is, but the second is all of us, like he said, I'm Irish.

He told me that, or he said, Kane is Irish. At some point we've become such an amalgamation. of things that it no longer, I mean, what, what am I? What do I take pride in? My grandfather came from, I know that one of my grandfather's immigrated from Wales. I know that there's English in there. I know that there's Scots Irish in there and maybe apparently there's Irish in there. So there's a lot. So what's the point in any of it? You know, for me, it's like I can't really put a toe hold in any of that stuff. So that's why I think in New York, you always have these waves of newer immigrants that are more attached. Yeah. It's closer to your family history in proximity.

and in chronology. Like, it's more recent. Yeah, like, we have, I mean, we had towns in Connecticut around me that were just all Italian towns. And you would think you were, like, everyone just immigrated over from Italy. It's fascinating. Well, that's what Kathleen Mara says on Facebook. She says, I beg to differ. The Irish Italians all assimilated.

Have you not seen that one of these cultures overwhelming America right now are not assimilating, and claiming that all Americans will convert to their? culture. The other is robbing Americans blind, not to mention learn English. Instead, we as Americans have catered to them. Okay, this is my point. I think Kathleen's making an interesting point. I think we would edit it, Kathleen, to say, have all assimilated at varying levels and degrees. I think that's a fair assessment of the groups. That's not to say Italians want to assimilate less than Irish. That is to say they are newer converts to America than the Irish. So it takes time to the professor's point.

But I totally agree. We're on a new thing now. I think we're on a new thing from a new background, a new set of values, and new rhetoric about not assimilating to America. Like that is, now maybe those people said that at the time. Maybe the Irish and the Italians of their time period said, we're not going to. Sure. We're not going to assimilate.

Does the Italians hate the Irish? No, that's the question. The question is, did the Irish hate the Italians? Sure. Right. Other way around. Interesting. Right.

That's really interesting. How was it in Goodfellas? Yeah. Good point. weren't the Irish, the cops, and all the Italian mob movies? Well, you watched the Irishman. Like in The Godfather? The Irishman about, what's his name, they made fun of him from being Irish, not Italian.

Mario Baca says, racist Americans hated Irish. Now those same racist hate Somalians. Shots fired. I just think when you start throwing racist, I just don't think you're contributing. constructively or interestingly to the conversation. I just, I really don't. Like, I'm with Mario here. I feel like, when did the American?

I feel like you would have been persecuted me and Dan, okay? You would have been like these Dean Catholics, you need to go back. I would have. I didn't know I was a marginalized, I didn't know I was a marginalized group but being a Catholic. I had no idea. I've never been marginalized in my life.

I had no idea. You're damn right. I would have, Patrick. And I'm still not so sure that you are a good American. He likes to be honest with you. don't even like Catholic. He likes the Pope in Rome. And I'm pretty sure that Dan is not. Okay? I'm ready to port Dan's ass real fast. Hey, I was born here.

Monterey says, truth has this over on YouTube now, has to be extracted from the past for us to learn while Roger Melon says, no, the difference is when they don't even try, and it's people like you that are the problem. Who? People that don't try. Yeah. Oh. And then finally one more. Vic G-2260 says, what the professor is telling us then is that the same is going on today or have we changed? He's asking for it.

Oh, and that is what I brought to the professor. Hey, the professor acknowledged this, and we didn't, right out of time to talk about this. Do they assimilate to America or does America assimilate to them? And I'm not talking about whether or not the spaghetti is an American. American food now. Do you see what I'm talking? I'm not talking about that. America's willing to adopt some things from yes, but this is the concern over cultures that are antagonistic to the, and I don't, it didn't even just America. It is antagonistic to Western civilization. That's the

larger point to be made. Like antagonism to Western civilization suggests an inability to assimilate and one of two things happens, you know, the hopeful message that over the long arc, they become assimilated Americans, or the more pessimistic one, that America simulates to them, and at some point it ceases to be the thing that we know of as America. Now, that, I think, was a pretty fascinating conversation with Professor. I hope you enjoyed it. We'll find out. We'll look at the numbers.

We'll see if you like that. Because you know what we should do next? We should do the Italians. Yeah. Maybe next time. on Wilcane Country. We'll see you then. Listen to ad-free with a Fox News podcast plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. And Amazon Prime members, you can listen to this show, ad-free on the Amazon Music app.