Now Playing at Reason.tv: Dick Armey on Illegal Immigrants: "Bless their hearts"

Nick Gillespie | February 26, 2008

At last fall's Reason in DC conference (October 26-27), former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) talked about how champions of free markets need to focus on for smaller and better government.

In this excerpt from his talk, Armey, now the head of Freedomworks, a nonprofit that promotes "lower taxes, less government, more freedom," takes a bold stand for one of the most pilloried populations in these United States: Illegal immigrants who come here to make a better life for their children and themselves.

"The biggest immigration problem we got in America is a government that's not doing its job," says Armey. "I don't like illegal immigration, but I'll tell you something: I don't run stop lights. But you put me out on the road at two o'clock in the morning on the way to the all-night drugstore to get medicine for my babies, and you give me a stop light that is stuck on red, and no traffic in sight, and I'm gonna go through that red light."

Click below to listen to the full excerpt (approximately three-and-a-half minutes).