WASHINGTON (Diya TV) — Ten members of the President’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) submitted their resignation to President Donald Trump Wednesday.
NBC News were the first to report the mass exodus of members from the commission, in a letter addressed to President Trump, two-thirds of the commission stated their objection to the president’s “portrayal of immigrants, refugees, people of color and people of various faiths as untrustworthy, threatening, and a drain on our nation.”
Dated Feb. 15, the letter lists a multitude of the Trump administration’s actions that the members say contradict commission’s principles, including proposals to cut federal resources to sanctuary cities, repealing the Affordable Care Act, and banning refugees and travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries.
Among the members who resigned are its chair and vice chair — Tung Thanh Nguyen, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco; and Mary Okada, president and CEO of Guam Community College. Actor Maulik Pancholy said the decision to leave was “an emotional and difficult” one.
“The choice to stay on under the new administration was with the hopes that I would have a seat at the table to be able to bring up the issues that are important to our community based on the work that’s happened over many years under this commission,” Pancholy, who was appointed to the commission in 2014, told NBC News. “It became very clear to me in the last month and a half that that voice at the table wasn’t going to be able to be effective inside the administration the way that I hoped it would be.”
In a separate letter sent to the president on Jan. 13, the commissioners requested a meeting to review the commission’s goals and to discuss issues affecting Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, but said they received no response.
The commissioners’ appointments had been scheduled to end Sept. 30, 2017.
Information from NBC News contributed to this report.
