ST PETER — The organizers of the Building Bridges conference at Gustavus Adolphus College know that their topic this year, immigration, isn’t exactly one in which a lot of students are well versed.

“I feel like it’s a topic that affects everyone,” said Rebekah Schulz, co-chair of the conference. “But it’s also something most people don’t know much about.”

After this year’s conference, everyone will have had their chance to at least know a little bit more. Maybe a lot more.

This will be Gustavus’ 15th Building Bridges conference and it will take place March 13. “Immigration: Surviving the Land of Opportunity” will focus on “the struggles immigrants face and the strength required to survive those struggles on a daily basis.”

The conference’s keynote speakers are Kao Kalia Yang, a Hmong-American author, and Paul Hillmer, a history professor at Concordia University in St. Paul.

Yang was born in Ban Vinai refugee camp in Thailand and came to the United States when she was 7. She earned bachelor’s degrees from Carleton College in American studies, women’s and gender studies and cross-cultural studies. Yang also holds a master’s of fine arts in creative nonfiction writing from Columbia University. She is the author of “The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir.”

Hillmer and several of his students at Concordia started the Hmong Oral History Project. He was awarded a “Save Our History” grant by the History Channel in 2006 and used it to create a six-part documentary examining the Hmong people and their resettlement in the Twin Cities.

Hillmer is the author of “A People’s History of the Hmong,” which is based on the research he and his students conducted.

One of the biggest pieces of the event comes at end of the conference. It’s called the Action Piece, and it is modeled loosely on a visit to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.

Attendees will be given a passport that contains the identity of an immigrant. They’ll then proceed through a series of tents where they’ll experience events that mimic the journey of a Mexican immigrant.

Like the Holocaust Museum, not every journey ends favorably. Some are sent back to the beginning to start over. Some make it to the U.S.

Once that journey is over, attendees are funneled into an area where they can assemble care packages for actual immigrants or write letters to congressmen about the immigration issue.

Gustavus junior and co-chair of the conference Mayanthi Jayawardena said the event may seem sympathetic to the pro-immigration side of the issue. But she says that, in reality, they’re just trying to educate people about the struggles immigrants face.

“We don’t want it to get heated. Our goal is to show where immigrants are coming from and what they go through,” she said.

And if someone wanted to use the letter-writing station to voice they’re opposition to illegal Mexicans entering the U.S., they’re welcome to do that, too.

The conference will feature the work of photographer Dan Bartletti, the working partner of journalist Sonia Nazario, who came to campus in the fall to talk about her book “Enrique’s Journey.”

That book was based on an extensive project the pair did following the life of a young boy who fled El Salvador and came to the U.S. to find his mother. Their work, published originally in the Los Angeles Times, won the pair a Pulitzer Prize.

Also presenting at the conference will be Abdi Roble and Doug Rutledge, who will talk about their coverage of Somali migration and the Somali Documentary Project.

“Though our conference is only a small way to help raise awareness of immigration issues, we hope that it will cause a ripple effect and will spread advocacy and understanding throughout Minnesota and the surrounding states,” Jayawardena said.