LATIMES.COM/OPINION THURSDAY, AUGUST 29, 2019A
OP-ED
I
teach classes instrategic
political communication.
Every week, for the last seven
years, I have begun each class
session with a simple ques-
tion: “What happened in the news
this week?” The idea is to draw out
lessons about how strategy and
power work in the digital age. I
often joke that it is my job to have a
professional opinion about the
latest Twitter storm.
But then Bret Stephens, a New
York Times columnist, emailed me
on Monday night, cc’ing my uni-
versity provost, to scold me over a
milquetoast joke I had made on
Twitter about bedbugs at the
Times. I’ve never been a fan of
Stephens, so when I saw the news
about bedbugs at the newspaper
and everyone joking about it, I
contributed a joke about Stephens.
His email was a bizarre overreac-
tion (he was offended that I called
him a metaphorical bedbug) — the
joke had gotten no traction on
social media, and was pretty tame
— so I posted about his response
on Twitter. Something clicked, and
the story went immediately viral.
The original joke had zero retweets
and nine likes. It now has 4,
retweets and 31,200 likes. I have
spent the past two days in the
center of the viral media contro-
versy, instead of observing with
interest from the sidelines.
(People are calling me the bed-
bug professor. I really hope that
name doesn’t stick.)
Naturally, I’ll be talking with my
class about it this week. When the
dust settles on this silly episode,
here are three lessons I think we
can take from it:This was never about civility; it
was about power.Bret Stephens
cc’d my provost because he wanted
to impose a social penalty on me
for making jokes about him online.
That isn’t a call for polite, civil,
rational discourse. It’s an exercise
of power. He wanted me and my
employer to realize that I had
offended an important voice at the
paper of record. When powerful
people demand civility from those
with less power, what they are
really saying is that they expect
obedience from their lessers.This was never going to go well for
him.I’m not sure what Stephens
hoped to achieve with his email to
me. He has done this sort of thing
before. But he really needs to learn
not to abuse his status to threaten
random Twitter users. What
Stephens should have realized, and
what every student in my class
learns, is that digital media pro-
vide a wider tactical repertoire for
mounting political campaigns. Of
course I was going to respond to his
outlandish email by sharing the
experience on social media. Of
course his overreaction would be
far more interesting than the origi-
nal joke. We’ve known about this
since 2005. It even has a name —
the Streisand Effect. When a per-
son in power tries to repress online
content, their actions will lead
more people to see that content.This was fun, but it could have
gotten scary.Part of why this story
has gone viral is that it is about so
little. The daily news is terrible.
The Amazon rainforest is burning,
the president retweets white na-
tionalists, the economy looks like it
is heading for a recession.... By
contrast, Bret Stephens, the au-
thor of “Free Speech and the Ne-
cessity of Discomfort,” couldn’t
handle the slightest discomfort
when he saw speech about himself
online.
The stakes are low here, while
they are terrifyingly high else-
where. But it’s worth keeping in
mind that these viral media stories
are usually much worse for every-
one involved. I am a tenured white
male professor. I have taken re-
markably little online abuse as a
result of this episode. If Stephens
had directed his message to one of
my female colleagues, they would
have faced much more online vit-
riol. I’ve had zero death threats.
Many women with a public plat-
form receive a death threat with
their daily morning coffee. This
particular episode was pretty
low-stakes, but we still have a lot of
work to do here.
I keep thinking back to the
catchphrase from Spider-Man —
with great power comes great
responsibility. Social media
changes how we exercise power.
This story will be forgotten in a
week. But the lesson here is about
power — how we build it, how we
deploy it, and how we use it respon-
sibly. I hope my students learn
something memorable from it.
Perhaps Stephens will too.David Karpfis an associate
professor of media and public
affairs at George Washington
University.My bedbug
moment
with Bret
Stephens
By David KarpfT
he Trump administration’s new
immigration policies — along with
a host of recent draconian enforce-
ment actions — are producing an
all-too-predictable and unfortu-
nate consequence: a dramatic increase in the
number of victims of immigration services
fraud.
Complaints about unscrupulous immigra-
tion services providers in Los Angeles County
jumped almost 90% in 2018, to about 275 cases,
according to the county’s Department of Con-
sumer and Business Affairs.
The sharp increase in complaints is alarm-
ing, and likely represents only a fraction of the
problem. Under California law, an individual
can register to become an immigration serv-
ices provider without any education or experi-
ence. Registered or not, these individuals —
even if well-intentioned — regularly violate
the law by providing legal advice, which state
law specifically prohibits.
There are about 1,100 registered immigra-
tion services providers in California, accord-
ing to the secretary of state’s office. No one can
know with certainty how many providers are
operating illegally, but they are often found
working the streets in high-traffic pedestrian
areas such as Grand Central Market in down-
town Los Angeles and in and around local
courthouses.
The trend toward predatory immigration
services providers is likely more prevalent in
California than in any other state. California is
home to about 3 million immigrants who have
entered the country illegally or overstayed
their visas, according to the Migration Policy
Institute, and account for about 8% of the
state’s population.
Many immigrants are understandably
afraid to come forward and acknowledge that
they’ve been scammed — often by the services
providers they hired — because they fear retri-
bution or being deported. Other immigrants
become aware they’ve been ripped off only
when federal authorities contact them to say
something is amiss with their applications.
Shady services operators market them-
selves as a more affordable and reliable option
than an immigration attorney, and then rou-
tinely take advantage of customers who often
have limited English language skills and little
to no understanding of complicated immigra-
tion laws and regulations.
Complaints against the operators range
from paperwork not being filled out correctly
and required documents not being included
in an application to more nefarious errors
such as dispensing incorrect legal advice or
charging for doing no work at all. For low-in-
come and hardworking immigrants, the con-
sequences can be steep — the worst cases lead
to deportation. Others lose hard earned
wages or life savings.
Complaints like these have been rising for
years. Last year’s huge increase followed a
more than 40% increase in complaints in 2017.
Latino immigrant communities, where
such services providers are known as notarios
or notarios publicos, have been particularly
targeted. In Latin America, notarios publicos
are highly trained and specialized lawyers, a
fact many phony operators exploit to attract
customers who don’t know the difference be-
tween those services and the counterfeit ones
in California.
But the problem is not confined to the Lat-
ino community. In the most egregious case
thus far, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Jackie
Lacey charged two San Gabriel Valley resi-
dents with fraud in May after they allegedly
extracted $1.5 million from seven Chinese na-
tionals who were told they could obtain visas
in exchange for investments in restaurants
owned by a perpetrator of the scam.
Between 2015 and 2019, Lacey’s Notario
Fraud Unit brought charges in more than 300
cases that bilked Los Angeles County immi-
grants out of $4.5 million.
Under the Trump administration, immi-
gration proceedings and paperwork have
grown so complex that they often leave no
margin for error, fueling the rise in complaints
and monetary losses due to fraudulent immi-
gration services providers.
A federal policy implemented last year al-
lows officials in Citizenship and Immigration
Services to deny any visa or green card appli-
cation that is missing documentation or con-
tains an error. Previously, officials were re-
quired to request additional documentation
to correct gaps in the paperwork. Failing that,30-day warnings were then issued to inform
applicants they would likely be rejected. Ap-
plicants can now be denied outright and im-
mediately referred to deportation proceed-
ings.
The paperwork required to immigrate le-
gally can be overwhelming. One common
form that requires legal advice and allows im-
migrants to adjust their status is 20 pages
long, with almost as many pages of instruc-
tions.
The only immigration form that doesn’t re-
quire legal advice is a change-of-address form,
Julia Vazquez, a Southwestern Law School
immigration professor, testified in a state As-
sembly hearing early this year.
In an effort to protect immigrants and stop
this fraud, a broad coalition of government, le-
gal aid and community-based organizations
is sponsoring Assembly Bill 1753, which would
allow only federally accredited nonprofit or-
ganizations and licensed attorneys to provide
fee-based immigration services. The bill
made it through the Assembly and is awaiting
a vote in the state Senate.
This legislation needs to become law. It is
critical that immigrants receive competent le-
gal advice from experts in immigration law.
The bill would align California law with the
federal law regarding immigration services
providers and uphold a recent California ap-
pellate court decision prohibiting non-attor-
neys and people who are not authorized by the
federal government from preparing immigra-
tion-related documents.
Immigrants have played a vital and defin-
ing role in California’s nearly 169-year history,
helping create what is now the world’s fifth-
largest economy and making significant con-
tributions to our rich civic and cultural life. We
should empower and protect those who seek
legal citizenship. AB 1753 is a step in that direc-
tion — a sensible, reasonable and overdue so-
lution to protect immigrants from fraudulent
immigration services providers.Hilda L. Solisrepresents the 1st District
on the Los Angeles County Board of
Supervisors. Stewart Kwohis the founding
president and executive director of Asian
Americans Advancing Justice, a Los Angeles
civil rights group.Let’s end shady immigration services
By Hilda L. Solis and Stewart Kwoh
A
fter almost 18 years of war,the
United States may finally be on
the verge of withdrawing from Af-
ghanistan.
Opponents of an Afghan with-
drawal or even drawdown justifiably point to
the clear limits of the proposed deal U.S. en-
voy Zalmay Khalilzad has negotiated with the
Taliban: The Afghan government has been
sidelined, a cease-fire could prove transitory
and the Taliban could renege on any pledge to
renounce Al Qaeda. Yet there is also a clear
reason for such an unsatisfactory agreement.
Despite nearly two decades of fighting — and
overwhelming superiority in manpower, fire-
power and money — the U.S. has remarkably
little leverage in Afghanistan.
The security situation is the worst it has
been since the U.S. invasion in 2001. Though
the U.S. stopped releasing district stability
data this year, independent analysts conclude
that the Taliban controls or contests the ma-
jority of Afghanistan’s districts. Civilian casu-
alties in 2018 were twice what they were during
even the worst years of Afghanistan’s brutal
1990s civil war. Most importantly, the Afghan
National Security Forces are taking unsus-
tainable casualties and attrition, as both
Afghan and U.S. military leaders concede.
Over a third of the Afghan National Army
must be replaced every year.
All of this comes despite another grim met-
ric: The U.S. dropped more bombs in Af-
ghanistan in 2018 than in any previous year.
The Trump administration’s “mini-surge,”
foisted on a clearly reluctant president by his
military advisors, has failed. All major securi-
ty indicators have stalled or moved in the
wrong direction. Even the instruments of this
escalation, the Army’s vaunted Security
Force Assistance Brigades, are struggling,
with noncombat attrition rates as high as
those of their Afghan partners.
American leverage is also affected by both
its looming presidential election and Presi-
dent Trump’s clear enthusiasm for withdraw-
al, but these are both secondary factors. The
major reason the United States finds itself
picking between a bad deal with the Taliban
and no deal at all is the foolish groupthink of
the U.S. foreign policy and military establish-
ment. Despite ample evidence that nation-
building in Afghanistan was a fool’s errand,
devoted followers of respectable foreign policy
opinion obstinately insist that the U.S. per-
sists with a failed Afghan strategy regardless
of the country’s cultural, geographic, political
and military realities. The U.S. has spent
more on Afghan reconstruction than it did on
the entire Marshall Plan in Europe — but has
precious little to show for it.
For most of the last two decades, the
United States has thrown good money after
bad in Afghanistan. That includes expanding
NATO’s mission in Afghanistan in 2006, surg-
ing troops and promising “government in a
box” under Gen. Stanley McChrystal and for-
mer President Obama, or dropping the so-
called Mother of All Bombs under Trump.
Now reduced to merely fighting not to lose, the
limits of American power and expertise are
plain for all to see. Victory is always said to be
just around the corner — and still could be, ac-
cording to some in Washington who refuse to
face reality.
Had the United States negotiated with theTaliban in 2003, 2009 or 2017, it could hardly
have gotten a worse deal than it stands to
achieve today. But there were always talking
heads, purported experts and armchair strat-
egists eager for escalation, not to mention
generals who wanted to prove their mettle.
Yet with nearly 2,500 American troops killed
and more than $1 trillion squandered in an at-
tempt to fix one of the most backward coun-
tries on earth, America is further than ever
from building a peaceful democracy in Kabul.
Both voters and veterans realize this:
Nearly 60% of both groups say the Afghan war
was not worth fighting, according to a recent
Pew Research Center survey.
The United States has little leverage as the
country enters what may be the stretch run of
negotiations to end its military role in Af-
ghanistan. The U.S. refusal to negotiate and
accept more realistic goals, even at moments
of temporary battlefield advantage, has left
Khalilzad with a weak hand, despite all the
blood and treasure expended.
There’s a saying in American infantry bat-
talions, usually directed by furious sergeants
at slow-moving privates: “Play stupid games,
win stupid prizes.” A nearly 18-year military
campaign in Afghanistan has been a very
stupid game, and leaving with a fig leaf agree-
ment is the fittingly stupid prize. Should U.S.
troops stay longer, whatever the justification,
our negotiating position will not be improved.
A bad deal or no deal are the options Ameri-
ca’s bipartisan foreign policy establishment
has left us with in Afghanistan.Gil Barndollaris a senior fellow at
Defense Priorities and the Military
Fellow-in-Residence at the Catholic
University of America’s Center for the
Study of Statesmanship. From 2009-16 he
served as an infantry officer in the Marines
and deployed to Afghanistan, Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba, and the Persian Gulf.FOR MOSTof the last two decades, the U.S. has thrown good money after bad in fighting the war in Afghanistan.
Carolyn ColeLos Angeles TimesEnding America’s longest war
With little leverage in
Afghanistan, the U.S.
can choose between a
bad deal — or no deal.
By Gil Barndollar