(BigGovernment.news) If you think your gym membership is getting expensive, wait until you hear about the fitness program you just paid for on behalf of refugees and immigrants to the U.S.
As reported by the Washington Free Beacon, the National Institutes of Health is set to spend nearly $1.7 million on an exercise program for migrants and refugees, in which “community partners” will be sent into mosques to discuss physical activity.
Yes, really.
As the WFB reported further:
“Healthy Immigrant Families: Working Together to Move More and to Eat Well” is an ongoing five year study trying to create a “sustainable, socio-culturally appropriate” physical activity initiative for refugees in Minnesota.
The researchers claim that immigrants and refugees are healthier than Americans when they get to the United States, and are concerned refugees will assimilate and adopt the eating habits of Americans.
So, not only is the NIH insulting American culture, it’s insulting American taxpayers by funding this admittedly creative way to waste more of your tax money.
“Across many measures, immigrant and refugee populations arrive to the US healthier than the general population, but the longer they reside in the US, the more they approximate the cardiovascular risk profiles of the general population,” the grant states. “These declines are mediated, in part, by less physical activity and lower dietary quality upon immigration among both adults and their children.”
The multi-year project is creating a “physical activity and nutrition intervention” for refugees led by trained “Family Health Promoters.”
“This project will broadly explore the efficacy of community participation in the design and implementation of an intervention to improve physical activity and nutrition among a demographic whose health is critical to the future of this country,” the grant says. “Given that over one million immigrants and refugees arrive in this country each year, the potential impact of this work on public health is considerable.”
No grants that we are aware of are being awarded to pay for American fitness programs like gym memberships, perhaps, or “family health promoters.”
This project isn’t even new, sadly. It began in 2012 and is approaching the $2 million-mark. And if the Obama administration gets its way, it is liable to grow: The president has said he wants to increase the number of migrants, refugees, immigrants – however he wants to classify them – in the coming years.
What’s even more laughable – or sad, depending on your point of view – is the claim by NIH officials that incoming refugees and immigrants are healthier than Americans. As the WFB noted, many had health problems, according to state records.
“Twenty-two percent who directly settled in Minnesota had Tuberculosis; 15 percent had a parasitic infection; 7 percent elevated blood lead; 5 percent had Hepatitis B; and 1 percent had Syphilis,” the site reported, citing Minnesota records.
And that’s just one state.
Thus the majority of the leading presidential contenders have yet to focus on what they would do to shrink government waste and redirect limited financial resources to more important programs and services for the American taxpayers funding them. We continue to wait for that debate to take place.
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