The hypocritical Mexican government is using U.S. taxpayer cash to build an anti-illegal immigration wall between Mexico and Guatemala — while at the same time condemning an identical wall on the American–Mexican border.

The cash — some $400 million annually — is handed over to the Mexican government in terms of the Mérida Initiative, which was signed into law in 2008. An additional $65 million per year is given to Central American countries.

The declared aim of the plan is to “combat the threats of drug trafficking, transnational organized crime and money laundering” and, according to reports, the building of a wall along the border river Suchiate in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas is part of this program.

Erick Zúñiga, mayor of the western Guatemalan municipality of Ayutla, better known as Tecún Umán, bordering Mexico, said the state of Chiapas has already begun construction of the barrier, which he said “looks like a wall to prevent the Suchiate River from flooding.”

There is nothing wrong, of course, with the idea of Mexico building a wall to stop hordes of illegal immigrants entering its territory. According to Mexican records, nearly 500,000 such illegals enter Mexico from Central and South America every year.

Most of these go on to try and enter the U.S., and hence it makes sense to build a wall to halt the invasion on the Mexican–Guatemalan border.

However, this is where the hypocrisy and double standards of the ruling elite in Washington DC, in Mexico, and in the pro-immigration lobby within the U.S. comes to the fore: all are hysterically opposed to an equally sensible wall being built on the American–Mexican border.

Mexican President Felipe Caldéron, for example, only a short while ago, told an international magazine that it was “hard to believe that a wall is now being built in Arizona and Texas only 17 years after the world celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall” and called for American taxpayers to build roads in Mexico “rather than walls.

“The decision made by Congress and the U.S. government [to build the wall] is deplorable. Humanity committed a grave error by constructing the Berlin Wall and I am sure that today the United States is committing a grave error in constructing a wall along our northern border,” Mr. Caldéron said.

He later went on to rail against the state of Arizona for its tough immigration measure, saying that “criminalizing immigration, which is a social economic phenomena . . . opens the door to intolerance, hate, and discrimination. My government cannot and will not remain indifferent when these kinds of policies go against human rights.”

Yet to be an illegal alien in Mexico is a felony and Mr. Caldéron has yet to speak out against the wall being built between his nation and Guatemala.

The American Third Position endorses the right of Mexico to build a wall along its border with Guatemala to counteract illegal immigration and crime.

The American Third Position also endorses the right of America to build a wall along its border with Mexico to counteract illegal immigration and crime.