Two Korean American congresswomen have withdrawn their endorsement for Texas GOP congressional candidate Sery Kim after she said she doesn’t want Chinese immigrants to come into the country.
Kim made the comments during a candidate forum on Wednesday in Texas’ 6th Congressional District while responding to a question about the US immigration crisis, according to CNN.
“I don’t want them here at all,” she said. “They steal our intellectual property, they give us coronavirus, they don’t hold themselves accountable……I can say that because I’m Korean,” she added.
California Reps. Young Kim and Michelle Steel withdrew their endorsement and condemned Kim’s comments, calling them “unacceptable and hurtful” while emphasizing that “discrimination and violence against Asians and Asian Americans has to stop.”
“As the first Korean American Republican women to serve in Congress, we want to empower and lift up fellow members of the (Asian American and Pacific Islander) community who want to serve their communities,” Reps. Kim and Steel said in a statement. “We talked with Sery Kim yesterday about her hurtful and untrue comments about Chinese immigrants, and made clear that her comments were unacceptable.”
The congresswomen said they urged Kim to apologize for her comments since hate crimes against the AAPI community are on the rise.
“However, she has not publicly shown remorse, and her words were contrary to what we stand for,” they added. “We cannot in good conscience continue to support her candidacy. We will continue to speak out in support of our AAPI community.”
Kim later told CNN that her comments were referring to “the Communist Party of China, and were not directed at Asian Americans, especially Chinese immigrants fleeing this oppressive regime.”
She also told CNN that she did not take back any remarks she made which included a claim that anti-Asian violence had not increased recently, despite a study last month proving that anti-Asian hate crimes rose by 145 percent in the last year.
Kim is running to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Texas congressman Ron Wright. Wright died in February of complications from COVID-19. She previously served under Donald Trump as assistant administrator for the Small Business Administration.
