San Diego immigration museum closes doors

By Morgan Lee

Tuesday, October 12, 2010 at 12:43 p.m.

A small San Diego museum dedicated to the immigrant experience and its influence on U.S. history has closed its doors, possibly for good.

The sour economy hindered fund-raising efforts for the New Americans Museum , located at Liberty Station, just west of the San Diego International Airport, according to Deborah Szekely, a longtime civic activist who launched the nonprofit venture about four years ago.

The facility was receiving more than 10,000 annual visitors, including many school groups, to see exhibitions such as a survey of 200 years of Jewish history in America and artwork by teenage immigrants.

The museum also aspired to help immigrants gather their personal records for the day when federal immigration reforms would provide a clear path to citizenship. But that initiative, like immigration reform itself, has been delayed over and over again.

Szekely, also the owner of the Rancho La Puerta spa in Tecate, Mexico, said she hopes to reopen the museum in three years when the economy, and perhaps the political environment, changes.

“Everybody has so many headaches in Washington, so many problems, that (immigration reform) doesn’t seem to be one they’re going to put on the table,â€