It is official Mexican government policy to urge Mexicans living in the United States to remain loyal to Mexico. All political factions in Mexico are united in the view that the US-Mexican border is illegitimate, and that Mexicans have the right to cross it any time. The view that Mexicans have a natural right to enter the United States explains the vitriol that met American discussions in 2006 about ways to stop illegal crossings, and an eventual Congressional vote to build a wall along certain parts of the Mexican border. President Vicente Fox called the plan for a wall “disgraceful and shameful,” and promised that if it were ever built it would come down like the Berlin Wall. Ordinary Mexicans were just as outraged.

Other Latin American countries were equally outraged. Guatemalan Vice President Eduardo Stein said a wall would be “absolutely intolerable and inhuman.” The foreign ministers of Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama and the Dominican Republic all gathered in Mexico City to denounce the American measures and to coordinate strategy to make sure the border remained open to illegal immigrants.

Latin American countries, themselves, carefully control their borders, but their governments insist that the United States remain open. In an act of unusual candor, Mexican President Felipe Calderon acknowledged in 2006 that in light of the harsh measures Mexico takes against illegal immigrants from Central America it was inconsistent to complain about American border controls. In 2005, Mexican authorities caught nearly a quarter million illegals, mostly from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.