Last year’s debate on immigration reform centered on discussions on improving border security for the nearly 2,000-mile border between the United States and Mexico by adding new fencing, more electronic detection technology including drones, and beefed-up numbers of security patrol.

Just a week after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's trip to Beijing, where he signed a Border Defense Cooperation Agreement, China has reminded India of its other border conflict: Arunachal Pradesh. The Hindu reports that China opened a new highway that links Medog, Tibet’s so-called “last isolated county,” with the rest of China. The Global Times called Medog “the last roadless county in China” – it did not mention India at all.

The mothers, holding the small hands of their children, can go only as far as the glass door, where Mexico ends and America begins. They lean down and send off their little ones with a kiss and a silent prayer. The children file into the U.S. port of entry, chatting in Spanish as they pull U.S. birth certificates covered in protective plastic from Barbie and SpongeBob backpacks. Armed U.S. border officers wave them onto American soil and the yellow buses waiting to take them to school in Luna County, N.M.

Israeli officials are already trying to use the opening of the crossing for public diplomacy, arguing that a planned new flotilla of pro-Palestinian activists with supplies for Gaza is a political provocation rather than a humanitarian mission.

Ambassador Menha Bakhoum, head of media and public diplomacy for the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, told CNN, “The Egyptian government decided to open the Rafah border to give relief to the people of Gaza permanently.