Southern Manitoba's migration story was on full display Monday as a delegation of journalism students from Princeton University paid a visit to the region. 

In fact, the area has become an annual destination for Deborah Amos' International News: Migration Reporting class with this latest visit the third in as many years that the award winning international journalist and author has organized. 

It all started when a Winnipeg-born colleague at the Ivy League school recommended to Amos that Winnipeg would be an excellent place to study immigration. Then a national news article came out telling the story of Altona-based Build A Village, the private refugee sponsor group that resettled a number of Syrian refugees equating to one per cent of the town's population. 

"I know a lot about Syrian refugees, because I covered the uprising, and so I was interested enough to come," said Amos, who has since formed a relationship with the founders and volunteers of Build A Village. "What I didn't know,

Build A Village hosted the group for lunch which was prepared by a cross section of newcomers to the community.then, is how big a role Mennonites have played in Canada's larger immigration story, that they were the ones who made up this idea of private resettlement, so that was a second interest - how did this all start?" 

And while Canada and the United States have taken different approaches to their respective refugee situations, Amos notes the one commonality is it is faith-based organizations sponsoring the resettlement efforts. 

Additionally, this week's visit exposed the students to a second side of the local story which Amos says has become more complicated, interesting and different since her first visit in 2017. 

While the delegation witnessed the work of Build A Village, members also toured the southern edge of the Municipality of Emerson-Franklin near the Canada/U.S. Border, home to one of the highest rates of illegal border crossings in Canada next to Roxham Road in Quebec. 

"We can go down to Emerson, we can look at the Border, and you can see where the irregular crossers come...and then you come here (Altona), and you see the more regular refugee system of Canada and how it works, and that is invaluable to students," explained Amos. 

According to Amos, with Canada and the United States both facing "a crisis" on their respective southern borders, the focus of this year's visit shifted toward asylum and examining the Safe Third Country Agreement. 

Edward Tian is the only Canadian in the student delegation. 

Following a visit with Emerson-Franklin Reeve Dave Carlson, Tian says he's looking forward to further exploring the different reactions of those living near the border in Quebec to those living in Southern Manitoba. 

"He mentioned that in Roxham Road the people there were asking for compensation that were inconvenienced (by the illegal border crossers), and.. he thought no one in his community would be asking for compensation, it would be more for support for first responders," he explained. 

For fellow student Kavya Chaturbedi, she was interested to hear of peoples' reactions to the asylum seekers knocking on resident's doors at 2 a.m. . 

"We asked if those constituents had a negative impression of those refugees, and on the whole, what is their opinion? And what I was surprised to hear was he (Carlson) said the general opinion is "they're going through a tough time, and we should help them as much as we can", which I think is very different from the American perspective, especially for those who are on the front-lines dealing one-to-one with the refugees," she said. 

Following the trip, which will also take the group to Toronto to visit with academic experts on immigration, each student will write a 2,000 word paper on a particular aspect of the overall theme.