Immigration and Disinformation with Qasim Rashid (S02 E01)

CONTENT WARNING

Descriptions of incarceration, the treatment of detainees

SYNOPSIS

Human rights lawyer and immigration attorney Qasim Rashid joins Rachel and Dan to dismantle the myth of a clear, consistent "legal way" to immigrate. The conversation moves between misinformation about the immigration system itself and misinformation about immigrants as people, ultimately examining the bipartisan failure to counter demonizing narratives. Rachel and Dan close with the lenses of Law-Abiding Citizen and Zero-Sum Framing.

INTERVIEW WITH QASIM RASHID

• Qasim Rashid — human rights lawyer, author, and former U.S. congressional candidate
• Dying of Whiteness by Jonathan Metzl — referenced on rural white communities opposing Medicaid expansion
• The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander — referenced on sophisticated modern expressions of racism
• Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi — referenced on racism and education
• Cato Institute research on immigration and wages — cited on immigrants' effect on native-born wages
• ProPublica report on wrongly detained U.S. citizens — cited on citizens arrested on suspicion of being immigrants

LENSES

Lens 1: Law-Abiding Citizen Systems often assume users can simply intuit and follow their rules, without asking whether those rules are clearly communicated in the first place. This lens asks whether a system's apparent simplicity is real or assumed — and whether confusion or noncompliance is a design failure being  blamed on the individual.

• How does the system communicate its rules, and can a user reasonably be expected to understand them without interpretation?
• How easy does the system make it to be a "law-abiding citizen" within it?
• If the system isn't communicating its rules well, is that a byproduct of messiness — or intentional?

Lens 2: Zero-Sum Framing Many systems, and the narratives built around them, implicitly frame resources, opportunity, or belonging as finite — where one group's gain necessarily means another's loss. This lens looks for where that zero-sum framing is being applied, whether it reflects reality, and who benefits from convincing people to see the world that way.

• Where does the system (or the discourse around it) frame things in terms of scarce, competing resources?
• Is the zero-sum trade-off actually true, or is it a rhetorical or negotiating tactic?
• Who benefits from people believing a situation is zero-sum when it may not be?

Episode edited by Jared Landis https://www.landispodcastediting.com/

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Personnel

• Dan Brown, Host
• Rachel Price, Host

Music

• Turtle Up Fool, by Elliot

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Unchecked is a production of Curious Squid

Curious Squid is a digital design consulting firm specializing in information architecture, user experience, and product design

Transcript

Qasim 0:00

We can come back from this, but it's going to require us to stop these culture wars, stop demonizing immigrants, stop demonizing Muslims, stop demonizing trans folks, stop demonizing low-income folks, and recognize that we are actually all on the same boat. And when we attack one another, we're just poking holes in our in the same boat that we're all in and we're all gonna sink. Instead, let's work together and recognize that there is a billionaire class who is incentivized to keep us fighting so that they can stay wealthy. Those are the folks that we need to work against, not each other.

Sarah 0:30

You're listening to Unchecked, the podcast about the architecture of disinformation with Dan Brown and Rachel Price.

Dan 0:43

I told you that I asked Claude for some feedback and I posted about it to LinkedIn, and now other people are doing the same thing.

Rachel 0:51

Oh no. Yeah. You started a viral trend. Well, one person started. You are infectious. Hi, Rachel. Hey Dan. How are you?

Dan 1:01

I'm excited that we landed on this particular person and this particular topic.

Rachel 1:06

Dan, who are we talking to today? And why on earth did you think this was a good idea?

Dan 1:12

I've been following this guy. His name is Qasim Rashid for years. First on Twitter and then I followed him to other social networks. He's Muslim and he used to be based here in the DC area. And I just loved following other dads in the DC area. But it's also important to me to be able to follow folks from other cultures and other walks of life to just really kind of get that exposure. I've I feel like I've always learned something from a post of his. And when we were thinking about topics, I think I was just sort of looking through my feed and I remembered that he's an immigration attorney. And I was like, immigration is a topic that is just fraught, obviously, and then it's just filled with misinformation. And it's obviously gotten really bad these days. So I was like, this is a perfect excuse for me to reach out to someone I consider a little bit of a hero to see. And he was extremely gracious and agreed right away to join us. So the intent was to talk through immigration. When I told you that we were going to talk about immigration, what was your first thought?

Rachel 2:22

You know, we've talked about some topics are frustrating but pretty straightforward. And some topics are frustrating because of their ambiguity and their complexity. And I feel like immigration and misinformation is one of those. And it's so wrapped up in the American experience. But everyone has such a different takeaway about what is going on and what's correct and what's incorrect. So I was excited for this, but I was also like, oh man, like you could have an entire sub-series on misinformation around immigration in the United States. But really excited. And especially uh when I found out with Costum, I knew it was going to be a really fun conversation. He's such an eloquent speaker and also tells a great dad joke.

Dan 3:13

Yeah.

Rachel 3:14

Which I don't know how to tell dad jokes because I just can't get myself to that level. But I appreciate being around dad jokes.

Dan 3:22

You can't stoop to that level.

Rachel 3:24

That is what I meant.

Dan 3:25

Yeah. I think we should warn folks, although this series has been political, Cosm takes us like all the way there. Yes. There's there's very clear politics going on here.

Rachel 3:39

Yep. Really entertaining conversation, very informative conversation. And we just go right to it. So all the way in. Yeah, but this is a fun one.

Dan 3:55

Today we get to talk to Kasim Rashid. He is a human rights lawyer, author, and former U.S. congressional candidate. He is the founder and president of Just Win. He runs a human rights newsletter, Let's Address This, which has 165,000 subscribers on Substack. And he reaches more than 2.4 million followers across social media as at Kasim Rashid. Kasim, thank you so much for joining us. I have been a fan of yours for years. Back in the day, I think it was just dad jokes that I started following you and then shit got real. So, and it's been educational for me to see how you have addressed misinformation and disinformation, as well as many other issues on the socials and elsewhere. So I'm really excited to talk to you. When I was thinking about the questions that I had, I realized that there's sort of two angles that we can talk about here in terms of the misinformation around immigration. That's what we're gonna focus on. One angle is the misinformation about immigrants and immigrant communities them, so the people themselves. The other is the misinformation about the process and the system of immigration in this country. Which has touched all of us, whether we realize it or not. So maybe we can start with the system itself, because the systems tend to be somewhat opaque. What would you say are the main falsehoods or misunderstandings around the US immigration system?

Qasim 5:14

Well, Dan Rachel, great to be here with both of you. And you caught me with dad jokes and it just went all downhill from there. So you caught me at the peak. If I make a dad joke during this conversation, you'll know because it'll be apparent. The question you ask is a really important one. I think one of the biggest misconceptions out there about the system is that there is some standard of legality that when people say, well, just come here legally, that there's like some, you know, like when you get your driver's license, there's the rules of the road of what, you know, legal driving is. And you can say, well, this guy's going 95 in a 35. That's illegal. There's nothing like that with the immigration system. It's completely arbitrary. And people seem to think like there's this really well-defined 250-year structure of immigration that people today uh are just not following. And that's just not true. There was no actual immigration law for the first hundred years of the country because we were a slave nation. We would enslave people and traffic them, and that was immigration. Post that, the only immigration laws that actually existed were immigration laws designed to restrict Chinese immigration, designed to restrict South Asian immigration, to justify taking Mexican land. The saying down there is that we didn't jump the border, the border jumped us. And that's a reality. And that really persisted up until about 1965, when the immigration and nationality civil rights acts were finally passed. And then even post that, I mean, 1965, by the way, is yesterday's newspaper. I mean, this is not some ancient, you know, tradition. This isn't yesterday's newspaper. And the point I try to make out to folks is that for every single person, left or right, screaming about come here illegally, you know, the way that we did, the way your ancestors came would be considered vehemently illegal right now. They would be considered the undocumented immigrants, the illegals, so to speak, that Trump is calling murderers and rapists and, you know, the bad homebreys and the bad cultures. So, one, have some humility. And then two, recognize that the system now is designed not for anything but exclusivity. It's not designed for optimization, it's not designed to improve our economy, it's not designed to facilitate families being together. It's designed to make things as difficult as humanly possible. And if we're gonna have meaningful immigration in this country, then we need to recognize that the system currently isn't just broken. It was built this way to be unjust. It's extraordinarily confusing. People shouldn't have to hire a lawyer to figure out how immigration laws work. I'm sorry. Just like, and I go back to driving analogy, you shouldn't have to hire a lawyer to understand how driving laws work. Similarly, you shouldn't have to hire a lawyer to understand how immigration laws work, but that's how complicated they've gotten. And so until we recognize that reality and then build a system that truly prioritizes the human experience, truly prioritizes the massive economic benefit, we're gonna continue in this downward spiral and it's gonna get more and more volatile and more and more violent.

Dan 7:58

Something you said really stuck out to me just now, which is that the way the system is set up right now is purely for exclusion, which I can imagine some interesting downstream consequences of that being kind of the main frame in which we understand immigration. It means that the extension from that is that people have a different understanding of what immigration is and what the implications of immigrants are. So going off script a little bit here, I wonder if you can talk a little bit about some of the kind of downstream implications of the way the immigration system is set up now. Does that question make sense?

Qasim 8:35

Yeah, it does. Right now it's it's set up to with this current regime, with the massive decrease in refugees, with the effective ban on asylum. I mean, again, I don't think people realize that a refugee and an asylum seeker are two very different things, but they are. And both have been restricted or nearly eliminated. With the restriction on work visas, with the restriction on scientists and engineers coming here, we are risking, and then with the restriction on agricultural workers, we are not only suffering a brain drain, people don't understand that even if we reverse everything right now, we have set back this country two decades. This administration has set back this country two decades because of the brain drain. Scientists aren't coming here anymore. They're not coming to Silicon Valley for innovation. Half of the Fortune 500 companies that exist were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants. Steve Jobs was half, I think, Lebanese. And the list goes on and on. So if you enjoy your newest iPhone, your newest Android, your latest apps, your latest technology, 50% chance you got to thank an immigrant family for that. So one, we're losing that edge. Two, on the economic justice aspect of it, we still have plenty of farmers out there who are now suffering immensely because they can't find workers anymore. And last year, 2025, there was a 46% increase in bankruptcies filed by farms. It's a combination of these absurd tariffs, combination of these restrictions on immigration. And look, none of this is new. You can go back to the 1980 debate between Ronald Reagan and George Bush. It's like watching the Twilight Zone because they are outdoing each other, not on who can demonize immigrants more, but on who loves immigrants more. And Ronald Reagan talks about the fact that immigrants are being exploited. And he goes on to say we should have open borders for immigrants so that can come here and work, support our economy, and then head back. He would be called a left-wing liberal, woke lunatic right now. Ronald Reagan, and by the way, I despise Ronald Reagan. Like he's one of the worst people objectively in humanity, but even he called for open borders for the economic justice aspect of it. And so denying all these things is just gutting us from the working class blue-collar jobs to the high impact tech jobs and the scientific innovation that our country has used to thrive and be at the forefront of the world. This is not sustainable. The damage has already been done. The question really now is how deep are we going to let this knife gut us? Because it's gotten pretty deep already.

Dan 10:51

The transformation from Reagan, I've seen some of the speeches that played recently. I mean, it may be obvious. Is 9-11 the turning point, would you say? Like what was it that sort of changed the attitude towards immigration from Reagan's obviously left-wing woke, you know, perspective on it to whatever this is today?

Qasim 11:11

I think it actually goes a little bit before that. I think that the Southern strategy that superseded Jim Crow just became stronger and stronger. You've always had this anti-black narrative in the United States. Anti-Indigenous, of course, as well. I mean, we can go back and look at the Supreme Court decisions from the 1920s about the boarding schools that committed genocide and justified genocide by sending federal dollars to kidnap Indigenous children. So it's it's been a racist and anti-black, anti-indigenous policy. When Jim Crow fell, the Southern strategy came into effect to convince poor white people that, hey, you may be poor, but at least you're not black. And you saw the the Willie Horton ads, you saw the welfare queen trope that Reagan put forth. And by the time you had the 80s come about, I think you had now about two decades of South Asian immigration come through as well. 80s, you know, early 90s, early 2000s, 9-11 just kind of accelerated and fueled that even more. But now you had a generation of Brown people coming in as well, kids like me. And, you know, if there's one thing about brown parents is that they don't let their kids screw around in school. They make them, you know, get the grades and get the scores and get, and that, unfortunately, combined with the anti-Black racism in South Asian communities, which we should talk about, fused kind of this narrative that America's changing too quickly, that, you know, this is not what we want. There was a study done by the Washington Post in 2008 that talked about welfare benefits, SNAP, TANF, food stamps, suctionated housing. And it found out that white people actually have no problem with welfare benefits. They're actually happy for the government to provide welfare. They just don't want black and brown people to get access to them as well. For us, Jonathan Metzer writes about in his book, Dying of Whiteness, how white Americans in rural parts of the country don't want Medicaid expansion. Because even though it would help them because they don't have healthcare access, it would also help black and brown people. And therefore they don't want it because they would rather die than let this become a country that supports black and brown people. So I don't think it was post-9-11. I think 9-11 certainly exacerbated it and made it worse. But the foundation has always been there of a nation built on the genocide of one people, the enslavement and genocide of another. And that's transformed. And Dr. Michelle Alexander talks about this in her book, The New Jim Crow, that it's not wise, and Dr. Abram Kennedy talks about this as well in a stamp from the beginning, that it's not wise to say that racism can simply be solved with more education. The policies that we're seeing today, whether it's gerrymandering or voter suppression or, you know, these voter ID laws, or you know, you can go on and on. They're extraordinarily sophisticated ways to express anti-blackness, anti-Latino, anti-Asian, anti-woman. So it's not a lack of education, it's a lack of integrity, it's a lack of justice that's causing these issues.

Dan 13:51

The US is meant to be a nation of immigrants. That's certainly what I learned in school. That is part of my personal history. I grew up in New York City, and so I feel this very much in my bones. Like even as isolated as one can be in New York City, you can never be perfectly isolated from the, you know, the multitude of people around you. But this isn't everyone's lived experience. So who benefits from people misunderstanding the immigration system? Who sort of gets to take advantage of the fact that we have not just demonized immigrants, but sort of set up this the system in this way?

Qasim 14:28

The same people who've always benefited, the wealthy elite class, the billionaire class, the top, you know, point one percent. We suffer worse wealth and income inequality now than even during the Gilded Age. And this is in part what led to the Civil War. After the Dred Scott decision, the anniversary was just passed that said that black people are subhuman. And, you know, legal scholars determined that was kind of the final straw that brought the camel's back that eventually led to violence in the Civil War because the wealthy didn't want to give up their enslaved. And we saw that, you know, 80 years later with the Great Depression, the massive levels of wealth and income inequality and the Great Depression, the decades of poverty that followed afterwards. And we're seeing that right now, that there is this massive polarization of wealth where 60% of Americans can't make ends meet. You do the math on that. I mean, you're talking, what, 250 million people can't make ends meet? It's asinine, it's astronomical. You talk about the fact that one in six Americans are food insecure. One in nine children are food insecure. They don't know where the next meal is coming from. We have things called lunch debt in this country. Like, my God, how immoral and sinful is that? And I use that word on purpose. It is a sin, in my view, to have a child have lunch debt. Like, what kind of a cruel, evil person decides this is a good idea? It's horrifying. And so it is really just to maintain the status quo of those who are super wealthy to stay in power. And that's what we're seeing with this regime, with this administration. And look, I'm not gonna let Democrats off the hook either. Biden Democrats had the ability to repeal these massive tax cuts. They had the ability to uh to extend the child tax credit, which decreased childhood poverty by 33%, which after it increased after it expired. They had the opportunity to cancel student loans, to cancel medical debt, to cancel lunch. They didn't do any of this stuff at all. They just talked about, you know, build back better. And then when Cinema and Manchin said no, they're like, okay, well, we tried. We threw up our hands and we're done. So, you know, absolutely uh the the lion's share, the blame falls on Trump and his cronies. But I'm not gonna excuse Biden either. He ran in 2020 saying the soul of America is at stake and I can fix it. And what did he do? He had the presidency right back to Trump. So I hope he remembers him and Merrick Garland as complicit in where we are right now. But that's who benefits. It's the wealthy, the billionaire class. And this is why I say to my Republican and conservative friends, I'm not your enemy. I promise you, I'm not your enemy. I promise you, I want your children to be happy and healthy and safe and strong and grow up and be whatever their heart desires for them to be. And I want them to have all the access and resources, but I'm not the one preventing them from doing that. It's the billionaire convincing you that I'm your problem while they're the ones who are robbing you. I mean, the four major tech companies, I think Google, Tesla, Microsoft, and Meta combined paid 4.9% tax, saving $51 billion in taxes this last year. $51 billion saved. And so when you see these people like Jeff Bezos, oh, he donated $100 million, who the hell cares? He just walked away with $51 billion. Do you really think it gives a crap about $100 million? It's like if you win $51,000 and give your friend $100 and say, okay, now we're or now we're even. No, it's it doesn't work that way. So that's where I want folks to remember that our enemy is not, it's not your working class guy. It's not your neighbor who somehow bought a nice car because they saved up for it. That's all irrelevant. What's relevant is the fact that you've got billionaires who are robbing us blind. A rand study showed uh $79 trillion in wealth stolen from the bottom 90% and given to the top nine or top 1%. That's the issue. That's where we should be focused against.

Dan 17:54

I'm thinking about comprehensive immigration reform as you're talking about it and about the policies, the failure of all politicians really to make any progress on comprehensive immigration reform. And we've seen this with other topics, other difficult topics that we've covered, like gun violence, gun reform, abortion, right? All of these things have policies that seem self-evident and yet are and are humane, but are kind of too far out of out of reach. And my bias is to say that there is some kind of misinformation that's preventing people from making good decisions about this. I mean, obviously there's beliefs and lots of other things that's happening, but I'm I'm wondering if there's a parallel here on the immigration side. What is the fundamental misunderstanding or misbelief that people have that's preventing this comprehensive immigration reform? Is there an obstacle to that that is not? I mean, we can we can blame billionaires and we can we can blame people for their prejudice against immigrants, but is there are there other things at work here that's preventing this from happening?

Qasim 19:04

I think it's a combination of two things. I think one, it's ignorance to what immigration actually looks like, what the actual policies of immigrants are, what they have to go through. Right. Afghan refugees who supported U.S. armed forces against the Taliban, who had been vetted and gone. There's an extraordinarily thorough vetting process that takes two years. As they were boarding their plane to finally come here, Trump canceled them and said, Up you're illegal, you have to leave now. Right. Haitian refugees who had documented status, Trump arbitrarily said, Up, now you're illegal, you have to leave now. And then I started raiding them. So I think one is just understanding what the actual process is. Most people don't. I would venture to guess you ask 100 people, 90 to 95% wouldn't have the first idea of what the difference between H1B or a K1 visa is or what any of these forms are, because they've never had the experience before. So that's one. And that would be okay if the second part wasn't also part of the problem. Two, there has been a bipartisan demonization of immigrants for a long, long time. And it was led by Trump and his cronies. And then Democrats have this obsession with wanting to be liked by Republicans. And I don't know who said this first, but if a genie gave Democrats three wishes, they would negotiate it down to one and then wish for something they think Republicans would like. Right. That's really where we are right now. And I I'll give you just one example of that. So sad. I'll give you one example of that. Both Obama and Biden deported more people than did Trump. And yet they keep buying into the narrative from Trump that Biden had open borders. And Biden came in and said, I'm gonna fight this narrative and I'm gonna deport even more people than Trump did to show how anti-open border I am. And guess what? People still accuse Biden of having open borders. Biden ran saying that how barbaric was Trump to suspend asylum. Doesn't he know that we started asylum after the Holocaust because uh Jewish people were horrifically massacred and killed? Millions were killed by Hitler, and that's why we have asylum. How dare Trump stop asylum? And then Biden gets into office and he suspends asylum. And I'm wondering, like, what the hell are you doing? Like, what planet am I on? So this is bipartisan demonization of immigrants. Trump has convinced the masses that immigrants are rapists and they're murderers and they're bringing in their drugs and all these things. When the all the facts tell the exact opposite picture. A study by uh Northwest University looked at the last 150 years of crime data nationally, a massive study, and found that there was not a single year, not even one, where crime rates for immigrants, even undocumented immigrants, were higher than that of US citizens. So, statistically speaking, at no point in the last 150 years of immigration law in this country, as restrictive and oppressive as it was, has there ever been a neighborhood or a city that had a higher crime rate because more immigrants moved there. You are statistically safer if you have more immigrants, documented or not, in your neighborhood. Most Americans don't know that. Most Americans don't know that undocumented immigrants, far from being a burden on our economy, contribute a hundred billion dollars a year in taxes that they get zero benefit from. I mean, I can go on and on, but but the the these the this second aspect, the fact that people don't know this is why. We're in the situation that we're in right now.

Rachel 22:01

Why don't we know this? What's your take on that?

Qasim 22:04

Because the party that is supposed to be driving the narrative to say, hey, immigrants not only are not to be feared, but here's why you should embrace them. Imagine if the Democratic Party came out and said, Trump is insane. He knows immigrants are great. Two of his three wives are immigrants. He knows immigrants get it, right? It's not gonna, they're not gonna do that. If you pointed out that, look, Trump's grandparents came here undocumented, couldn't speak a word of English, and now he's president. This is the power of this country when we empower immigrants. You know, imagine if they pointed out that look, not only are immigrants lower in crime rates, but much of the technological innovation that we've had, all these things that you enjoy are because of immigrants. Imagine if they pointed out, even the Cato Institute talks about this, which is a right-wing conservative think tank that immigrants entering a workforce increases wages for all people, including for native-born citizens. Imagine if they talked about this that look, if you want to increase your wages, it's not that immigrants are stealing your jobs. It's that these major corporations are offshoring jobs overseas. And immigrants being here is actually increasing wages. All these facts exist and all these examples exist. But instead of leaning into the factual reality, Democrats are negotiating three wishes onto one wish and wishing for something that they hope Republicans will like. And it's just such an asinine methodology. It just doesn't work. I don't know why they keep doing it. It's it's absurd.

Rachel 23:16

I'm sitting here thinking about the cognitive dissonance of an entire population of a country suddenly having to engage with the facts of the benefits of being in a nation founded on immigrants and the dissonance of looking at that against the story that we've been telling ourselves or had told to us about the people who are immigrants for our entire history.

Qasim 23:39

I mean, look, it was eight or nine of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were immigrants. So from every angle, immigrants have been part and parcel of this country. And look, if hell, talk about the fact that America has the best food scene in the world because of immigrants, right? I mean, like I'm like, you know, the the whole during the Hillary Clinton thing when they're like, you know, there might be a taco truck at every corner. I'm like, yes, that's a winning message. Who doesn't love tacos? You find me the most racist right-wing MAGA. And he'll be like, yeah, but those tacos are really good. Like, come on, give me a break. Why are you running from that? Embrace that. Like, yes, a taco truck and a shawarma truck and the best Chinese food you ever had. Like, lean into this. Why are you afraid of what makes this country truly great?

Rachel 24:21

I mean, I think this is kind of our second angle that we wanted to cover today, which is like, okay, let's talk about some of the misinformation around immigrants themselves. Because I feel like this is where some of the clash happens, is that there are just conflicting stories we're telling ourselves about who immigrants are and and what role they play for us.

Dan 24:39

And actually, I wanted to avoid saying some of these terrible things out loud because I feel like we've heard them. And Cosmo, you had said something on our pre-interview that I thought was really interesting about how the Overton window is shifting and that our perception of what is appropriate has changed. And I'm wondering, do you have other examples of that? We know the famous one from the debate, but I'm I'm wondering if there are other examples of that that you can think of of how the media has allowed for what is appropriate to have shifted into places that we find offensive or that we used to find offensive.

Qasim 25:17

I think the biggest one right now, as I think about this, is the fact that Donald Trump and Republicans are building concentration camps in America right now. They're buying up warehouses, spending billions of dollars. And it's also a grift because they're paying, there's some studies done on this, they're paying 10x the cost per square foot for these warehouses. So there's clearly a grift happening. But they're building concentration camps. We have documented evidence and reporting that they are crushing the testicles of men in these places. That's torture. That's one of the definitions of genocide to destroy people's reproductive organs. We have documented evidence that children are being sexually molested. There's a study by The Guardian of 5,000 documented cases of child rape and sexual abuse by DHS and ICE. We know that women are suffering rape in Louisiana. There was an ICE or DHS or ICE guard who was who raped a woman for months on end in exchange to let her see her daughter. And the question isn't just how did he get away with it? It's how many people knew and covered for him. Because how do you do that in a secure facility for months on end and just nobody notices that, hey, at two o'clock, you know, so-and-so is suddenly disappearing for an hour and uh this woman looks disheveled afterwards. I mean, this is and this is just what we know of. And these this is what happens in cost. If I if I took away the modern day, uh, if I stripped away the modern day description and said, hey, this is what happened in uh in Auschwitz, you would believe me because we know that's what happened in Auschwitz. But that's what's happening right now in the United States. And we have children missing. We have hundreds of names of people missing. We don't know where they went, we have no idea where they went. And so the Overton window has shifted where that's normalized, where that's just not a big deal anymore. It's not even talked about. It should be front page news on every single news channel, but it's not. And that's my fear that this kind of stuff is becoming normalized as just kind of part of the discourse and people are are going about their day. That's what horrifies me.

Dan 27:06

And there's there's no accountability right either. And I think that contributes to this shift as well. It's well, no one's paying the price, so maybe this is what should be happening, or maybe this is this is okay to some extent, right? And uh, or maybe this is just the nature of what immigrants have to deal with. And I just I the lack of accountability is really frustrating and and depressing.

Qasim 27:29

And for people who think that I mean, close on everything you said, Dan, and for people who think that this is an immigrant problem, it doesn't affect me. ProPublica published a report of nearly 200 US citizens arrested and tortured on on the accusation that they were immigrants. We've already seen ICE is on pace to kill a record number of people just two months into the year. And at this rate, they're gonna kill hundreds of people. Again, that we know of. So, you you know, this is gonna affect you in more ways than you can even count, than you can even imagine. I uh, you know, my my eldest is 17, and we're talking about applying for colleges, and he's like, Does it really matter? As long as it's the top school that I want to get into, does it really matter? I'm like, Well, let me ask you a question. Do you care about speaking up for things like justice for Palestine? He goes, Yeah, of course. I'm like, Well, Columbia University could it could get you arrested. And he's been following it. And he goes, I I never really thought that that could happen here. I'm like, well, this is the reality. You know, you're a U.S. citizen, you were born and raised here. This is the only country you've ever known. But at Columbia University, they've signed a deal with the devil. And if you speak up, tough luck. Right. I mean, these are real conversations that we unfortunately need to have. Rachel, I know you've got a toddler at home, and college seems like a long time away, but uh, as you know, it's not, right? It's around the corner. And these are questions that every parent's gonna need to ask themselves of what kind of world do I want my kids. So I think the point is that the lessons from Nazi Germany or from past dictatorships can't just be, well, this really horrible thing happened. Let's make sure it doesn't happen again. It has to be, hey, we should probably identify what caused those things to happen. Because once it's happening, it's too late, right? It's like once you've got full-blown cancer, it's too late. Maybe when it was like a speck, that's when you get it exercised and removed. You don't wait till it becomes the size of a you know, a golf ball or an orange or a or you know, whatnot. And so that's where we are right now. And I still have eternal hope that we can come back from this, but it's gonna require us to stop these culture wars, stop demonizing immigrants, stop demonizing Muslims, stop demonizing trans folks, stop demonizing low-income folks, and recognize that we are actually all on the same boat. And when we attack one another, we're just poking holes in our in the same boat that we're all in and we're all gonna sink. Instead, let's work together and recognize that there is a billionaire class who is incentivized to keep us fighting so that they can stay wealthy. Those are the folks that we need to work against, not each other.

Dan 29:37

Is there something in particular that you're seeing today that gives you hope? We can all have that hope, but is there any as you look on the tapestry of the shit show in front of us, is there any kind of thing that you feel like, okay, this could lead to something bigger and better?

Qasim 29:53

I mean, I think two things I always think about. One, I have hope in, and this is gonna sound cliche, but I have hope in this country and I have hope in the American people. This isn't the first time Americans have faced fascism in this country. It's not the first time we've faced systemic misogyny, systemic racism, systemic violence. We've faced it unfortunately numerous times before. And uh and we've overcome it before, and we can overcome it now. And the second thing is that we have something that past generations didn't have, and that is that we have access to their shoulders to stand on. We know what the the Claudette Colvins and the Robert Smalls and the and the Malcolm X's and the Dr. Kings and the Rosa Parks of the world did. Um we know the John Browns of the world, right? We've seen the suffrage movement, we've seen the elevation of martialized communities because people banded together and said, not in our name, enough is enough. And we can look at those examples. And James Baldw talks about this as well when he's asked late in his life by journalists that how do you overcome the despair that you feel in the world? And he said, I'm angry at the world, but I don't despair. He goes, I'm absolutely angered by the world, but I'm never in despair because I can't look at my children. You can't tell the children that there's no hope. We have to hold on to hope. And so I'm an eternal optimist. I'm certainly a realist and pragmatic and will not sugarcoat the injustices that we face, but that should never be confused with hopelessness. That's not my vocabulary. As long as I have breath in my lungs and blood in my veins, whatever the cliche statement is, I have to have hope. I look at my kids, I look at my nephews and nieces, I look at your kids, and I can't look at them in their adorable, cute little puppy dog eyes and say there's no hope. Uh that's a terrible thing to do. I want them to be inspired, I want them to have hope. And so I look at that generation before us that overcame this, and I look at the generation coming after us who uh has not been callous to the world, and I'm trying to be that bridge to make sure that they build on something better than what we have.

Dan 31:44

Let's just dive in. What was your lens?

Rachel 31:47

Okay, my lens is called law-abiding citizen. And so this lens asks us how does the system communicate its laws? And I don't mean literal laws. I mean, maybe I do, maybe this is the T and C, but like, how does the system communicate what you're supposed to do and how you're supposed to do it correctly? How easy does the system make it to be a law-abiding citizen of the system? Can a user be reasonably expected to understand those laws without interpretation? And if not, why? I think that's actually at the heart of this lens is coming to this idea of like, if the system isn't communicating its laws, is that intentional? Like, take a minute. Yeah. The thing I like about this lens is that if you look at milestones of growth or maybe knowledge maturity in IA or in UX, one of the things you notice is there's like this before time where you look at a system and how complex it is, and you think, those silly little people, they just didn't know how to do this. I can help. And then the after this milestone, you look at this complex system and you're like, hmm, I can guess what's going on. Like, there's a reason this is like this. And some of the reasons are just messiness and apathy. And some of the reasons are not apathy. Right. And so this lens asks you to really like sit for a minute and look at why are the laws being communicated well or poorly.

Dan 33:15

I love this. I think there's a lot more expectations and constraints governing our interactions with digital experiences. This is sort of an extension, a many generations extension of this sort of basic idea that when a user clicks on a link, they should know what they're going to get.

Rachel 33:32

Yes. Right?

Dan 33:33

Like there's sort of this expectation setting, and laws or rules are just expectations that we put on people.

Rachel 33:40

Yeah, the thing that got me thinking about this was when we were talking about this misinformation or misguided belief that people should just get their citizenship the legal way, as if the legal way is this straightforward, non-arbitrary thing. And what we talked about with him is that the legal way, quote unquote, is completely arbitrary and has changed over time. And it's not a straightforward thing. There's not an easy and all this stuff. And that really made me think about this idea of we have this belief like there's just like, hey, user, just like do it the way we want you to, or hey, user, just do it the way that the system is set up to have you do it. Like this is so obvious. This is how we built it. And that is such a blind assumption that the system actually is set up to allow a user to do the right thing. Or I really am actually interested in some literal laws of systems. How easy does the system make it to follow your terms and conditions? I'm super curious about that. My favorite projects are ones where I get to design things or be in the room at some point with a legal team. Like I just love these, which I've had this a couple of times.

Dan 34:48

That is the true litmus test of an information architect. Do you like talking to lawyers?

Rachel 34:54

Yes, I do. I love the constraints. And I love understanding the nuances of like the spirit of the constraint and the actual constraint and like misinterpretations around what the translation from a technical legal constraint to a user experience are like there's a lot of translating that happens there. I love that stuff. Yeah. So that's this lens is probably coming from that part of my brain that's like, ooh, terms of conditions and legal constraints. Yes.

Dan 35:21

I mean, it all also gets back to the definition of what do we mean by immigration? What do we mean by immigrant, right? Have we set people's expectations about what those things are and set the rules about what those are so people can then also understand them? So I'm just gonna put you on the spot for a sec, because you did that to me last week. And so now I'm doing it to you.

Rachel 35:39

I'm ready.

Dan 35:40

Connect the dots between this lens and disinformation.

Rachel 35:44

Okay. I think that the misinformation is when there's this belief floating out there that goes unquestioned that there's a law, just follow it. And if you're not following it, then you're breaking the law. And now I have a reason to think you shouldn't be here. Now I have a reason to think like you're the enemy because you're not following the law. And for me, that framing is really, really powerful because you get to take the true story of a person or group of people who are trying to do their best and trying to follow laws. And the system is set up in such a way that it's really, really, really hard to do that. So you take these well-intentioned people who are accidentally not following the law or something, and you get to reframe that as this intentional malice. You're not following my laws. Get out of here. Right. And that belief that the system of laws is easier to follow and clearer than it actually is. You're taking a flaw in the system and making that an individual's problem. You know what I mean? Yeah. And so I think that that is actually a really powerful misinformation mechanism because it takes a really big wicked problem that is hard to solve and it pins it on an individual and say, well, it's your problem. You can't figure this out. And it's a lot easier for us to tell ourselves stories about individuals with bad intent doing bad things than it is for us to tell ourselves interesting stories about systems gonna ride.

Dan 37:09

Yes.

Rachel 37:09

Did I pass?

Dan 37:10

You you did. Okay. You exceeded my expectations. And what you were talking about made me think of the sort of through line in everything that you've been saying is one of the problems that we have with modern immigration is that there are different rules for different people. Yes. And there should be the same rules for everybody. Or if there are different rules for different people, there should be a very clear rationale. You should want to point to it. Yeah. And I just remember when the social network, formerly known as Twitter, started to fall apart. One of the symptoms of that was this sort of extremely arbitrary enforcement of speech-related rules. Some people were allowed to say certain things and some people were not allowed to say certain things. And it truly was the whim of whoever was in control at that moment, which meant that there were different rules for different people. And I think a lot of frustration that people have with social networks these days is the apparent arbitrariness of enforcing speech rules. And some of that is expressed through the algorithm, right? The algorithm suppresses certain things, and it's not clear purposefully why those things were suppressed and why other things get through. It all connects back to this notion that we need to make these rules explicit so we can help people be law-abiding citizens.

Rachel 38:30

And it makes me start to think about the difference between rules and enforcement of the rules. And those, like that's two different avenues for shenanigans, right? Like you could have clear rules, but your enforcement is Byzantine. Yes. Or vice versa. You could have like a completely opaque rules that then enforcement just becomes like a joke because you can't enforce rules you don't understand.

Dan 38:54

And at the heart of this is asking why. Why is it so different? Why is it so Byzantine? Why is it that's great?

Rachel 38:59

Yeah, because I think it's easy to assume when we inherit a system. I think in a lot of situations, the why is probably relatively arbitrary and doesn't have malice behind it. But I think it's easy to forget to interrogate those things when you are new to a system or you inherit a system. And I think it's a good idea to take a beat to interrogate these things to just see what you find out, see what you learn. Yep. What was your lens, Dan?

Dan 39:22

That is a tough act to follow.

Rachel 39:25

I know. I'm sorry.

Dan 39:26

I also had a few. I think I'm gonna say the one that I'm least comfortable with, and maybe you can help me flesh it out. But I I sort of liked this idea that at the heart of a lot of anti-immigrant feeling in this country, and that that calls to be talked about is sort of this idea that there's a zero-sum game at work, that by immigrants getting jobs, citizens don't get jobs. Or by undocumented immigrants doing things, citizens don't get those things. And that zero-sum framing, I think, is really just a frame, right? We don't think that's true, or or we have facts to say that those things are not true. And Carson gave us just a ton of great examples, which made me even more excited to live in an extremely diverse place in the world and get to experience those wide variety of things. But it's very easy to also slip into this notion that, well, if they have a thing, then I don't have that thing. And I would rather I have that thing. So I'm calling this lens zero-sum framing.

Rachel 40:37

I really like this lens a lot. And I think it's a really common issue, not just in the immigration sphere, but you see it a lot in women's rights and healthcare, fighting over bathrooms. I mean, do you know why are humans so prone to zero-sum thinking?

Dan 40:56

I don't think humans are. I don't think humans are.

Rachel 40:58

I think uh I think they are. Fine. I have a theory they are.

Dan 41:02

And I'm uh now I realize I don't know anything about uh there are plenty of examples of communities that are much more collaborative, right?

Rachel 41:10

Oh, so capitalists are really prone towards zero-summers.

Dan 41:13

I mean, the whole the whole foundation of capitalism is competition. And the whole foundation of competition is that you can have a winner and a loser. Yeah. And the frustration is that I think economists have developed a much more nuanced understanding of what cooperation brings. But one of the things that we lose in our kind of what simplification of these complex ideas like immigration is that kind of nuance, right? We lose the nuance. So we just think competition, winners and losers, and that's it.

Rachel 41:47

Yeah. Okay. So what are a couple examples of this? They could be hypothetical where like someone might be looking at a system and looking for signals of zero-sum framing. Put on the spot. Yeah. Okay.

Dan 42:00

No, I'm going to please hold. Do we have Jeopardy music that we can put in here?

Rachel 42:05

No, but the one that comes to mind is do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do.

Dan 42:11

That doesn't that doesn't help me think. But it's a like trick. I mean, okay, let's just talk it through. So it usually has to do with the availability of resources and the fact that there are resources or framing things in terms of resources, and that by giving some people access to those resources, we take those resources away from other people. And everything I look at now is about fucking AI. And I can't help but then connect that dot to things like access to data, but also access to the physical resources that are required in order to make AI work. So I think when we talk about AI, we can't just talk about the prompt that we see on the screen, but everything else that comes with it. I think the zero sum comes in when we say something like, well, it's either we have very cool technology and everyone else, all the people who need to make that happen, suffer, or everyone lives a humane life and we don't get really cool technology. And it's like, guys, surely, surely we can make both of these things true.

Rachel 43:22

You know what this makes me think of? I thought about trade-offs and how much you talk about trade-offs. And I've learned a lot from you about thinking about trade-offs. And I think this is an interesting thing where if you're working in a system, whether it's a system of people, I mean, we all work in systems. If you're looking at a system you've literally designed, whatever, where are the trade-offs being framed as zero sum trade-offs? Because I can think of a lot of product conversations I've had in my career where folks come up with a trade-off that I don't think is intentionally framed as zero sum, but it's a pretty powerful like negotiating tactic or like scare tactic.

Dan 43:59

What's frustrating is like having that kind of very clear delineation, that A, B thinking is really helpful in the design process. But we have to separate ourselves from this was useful for design, from if we actually implement it like this, someone's probably gonna get hurt because we've which maybe s sounds like it's overstating it, but I these days I don't think it is. We have to understand that these trade-offs have far-reaching implications beyond what we see on the screen.

Rachel 44:29

I always uh try to use these lenses to see if I can find more ways to talk about why I don't like gamification so much.

Dan 44:37

I mean, I use it to talk about why I don't like AI. So here we are.

Rachel 44:41

Do you think like a leaderboard is kind of a zero-sum thing where it's like, well, I won and you didn't. I'm first and you're not.

Dan 44:48

Yeah. Yeah. So for a while I was using Duolingo to do chess. And they are sort of the forerunner of, or they, you know, they were they were a leader in gamification of these.

Rachel 45:01

Oh, yeah.

Dan 45:02

It's really interesting to see how they backed off some of that stuff. I don't have specific examples top of mind, but I did feel like it was a little less relentless and competitive when I was using it last year for chess. And yet I still stopped. And I I stopped doing it because I found the process very frustrating.

Rachel 45:23

Yeah. Great. Uh, those were your lenses.

Dan 45:27

We did it. And that was unchecked. Thanks so much for listening. We really want to hear from you. If you've got ideas for topics or guests or stories, drop us a line at unchecked at curious-squid.com. If you made use of the lenses that we described today in your practice, we want to hear about that too. Hey, check the show notes for any of the links that we talked about today, and it would really mean a lot to us if you shared this episode with a friend and rated and reviewed us on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you.