It is with profound sadness that FAIR is announcing the sudden passing on November 10th of Jack Oliver, who served as the legislative director at Floridians for Immigration Enforcement (FLIMEN) from 2006 to 2018.
FAIR’s President Dan Stein observed, “He really cared about the little guy, he cared about immigration’s impact on America’s workers and small businesses, he never seemed to complain, he was just a doer.”
Jack Oliver spent most of his career in Ohio operating his dry wall construction company that hired only American citizens or immigrants with legal status. He was eventually forced to shut down his business when the lower wages paid to illegal immigrant laborers gave his competitors an unfair and insurmountable advantage. He then retired in 2005-2006 and devoted his time to FLIMEN and political activism on behalf of pro-immigration enforcement candidates in Florida.
At FLIMEN, Jack’s primary passion was to lobby the legislature to mandate the use of E-Verify, the free federal online system that allows employers to quickly fulfill their legal responsibility to ascertain that their employees have the legal right to work in America and are not submitting fraudulent work documents to the IRS.
Throughout 2017-2018, Jack waged a grassroots campaign to get the Florida Constitution Revision Commission (FCRC) to put E-verify on the November ballot in order to let Florida voters decide whether or not to amend to the state constitution to mandate E-verify. The effort was a near miss. The initial two procedural votes passed 10-6 and 19-13 in favor, but the final vote of the FCRC was 12-24 against, as entrenched business and agricultural interests lobbied the commission to oppose E-verify.
FLIMEN’s founder Dave Caulkett remarked, “He was an Energizer Bunny. … He worked tirelessly for E-verify. He was the one who said ‘FLIMEN really needs to address the root cause of illegal immigration and that is the jobs magnet.’ For over ten years Jack has worked with citizens, politicians, FAIR, and everybody to try to get E-verify enacted, and as a result, we are in the best position ever this legislative session to get E-verify enacted.“
During his time with FLIMEN, Jack also worked tirelessly to promote legislation to oppose driver’s licenses and in-state tuition for illegal immigrants, as well as an earlier attempt to pass an E-verify bill in the Florida House of Representatives in 2010. He was a prolific recruiter who once conducted a large activist training with FLIMEN that had about 100 activists, and 40 joined him in Tallahassee for public comments in support of commonsense immigration legislation. Jack also served as the immigration issue coordinator for the Trump Club of Palm Beach County, where he provided monthly updates on federal and state immigration policy and worked to promote E-verify to elected officials and grassroots activists in Palm Beach.
Caulkett said of his friend and colleague, “…Being the patriot he was, he often wore the American flag and was very loving of this country and everything it had done for him.”
Memorial services will be held in December. Further details will be announced at www.flimen.org