Editorial: Punishing businesses for working on Trump’s wall is foolish and wrong

The federal government has winnowed a list of potential builders of President Trump’s wall on the border with Mexico from a couple of hundred applicants to about 40 firms, which now have until May 30 to submit full design proposals. From those submissions, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials will select a handful of finalists to build prototypes at the Otay Mesa border crossing in San Diego. But if a piece of ill-advised legislation is approved in Sacramento, winning bidders who work on the California section of the wall could find themselves barred from any future state construction contracts.

SB 30 is one of several bills introduced when the current legislative session began in December that were framed in response to Trump’s election. Some of those measures make sense, such as SB 54, which would bar state and local police, schools, health providers and other agencies from voluntarily cooperating with federal immigration enforcement officials. Or SB 6, which would allocate money for immigration-law organizations to provide legal advice for undocumented people during deportation proceedings.

But Sen. Richard Lara’s SB 30, which is to be heard by the Appropriations Committee on Monday, is an overreach that would penalize businesses that are doing nothing wrong and breaking no laws.

We have been loud and steady in denouncing Trump’s border wall, a singularly silly idea that will do little to deter illegal immigration. Traffickers will simply find other routes, and besides, a growing share of the population living in the U.S. illegally entered the country with valid visas — rather than by sneaking over the border — and then simply didn’t leave. Overall, the number of people living in the country illegally has declined over the last decade.

But it is possible to oppose the border wall without supporting Lara’s bill. The bill would punish contractors and other businesses for seeking work and doing their jobs — simply because some state political leaders dislike the project they’re working on. Should the state really be discriminating against some private companies based on their political views? If the state doesn’t want to participate in building the wall, fine, but there is little justification for punishing third-party companies that engage in perfectly legal activities. And it’s a slippery slope: If in a few years state legislators have moral qualms about, say, abortion, they may choose to deny state contracts to companies that build abortion clinics, or doctors who perform the procedures. Would that be a good idea?

The border wall exists in Trump’s mind — and in the minds of his followers — as a symbol more than anything else; it is a declaration that the United States is getting tough on illegal immigration. For Trump’s opponents, it is an expensive symbol of xenophobia and nationalism. But so too is Lara’s bill a symbol. It is meant to show that California — home to more than one in five of the immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally — stands firmly against Trump’s immigration policies.

That’s an understandable impulse. But it will have virtually no effect in stopping the wall. As stupid as the idea of a nearly 2,000-mile barrier might be, Trump can propose it, Congress can appropriate the tax dollars to it and, barring a successful legal challenge, it can get built. And businesses can accept contracts to do the work. Punishing a small group of contractors will not stand in its way.

Lara and his supporters aren’t alone in their misguided efforts. Los Angeles Councilman Gil Cedillo on Friday introduced a measure that would require potential city contractors to divulge whether they have done any work on the wall. Cedillo brands it as a move toward transparency, but it’s not. It’s political bullying, and attempted shaming. San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley are also considering or have adopted measures that would penalize businesses for working on the wall.

It might be the right battle, but it’s the wrong tactic. The place to fight the wall is in Congress, and in the courts. (In the court of public opinion, it’s already losing.) The Senate should bury Lara’s bill, and the Los Angeles City Council and other municipal bodies across the state should stop themselves before they commit similar acts of silliness.

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