Ohio is locked into an international fight to attract the world’s best and brightest. A recent report from The Buckeye Institute details how a well-designed system of state-based visas can attract more talent to Ohio, ease strains in industries critical to national security, keep semiconductor investments on track, complement efforts to train its existing workforce, and help reverse worrisome demographic trends.

With emigration regularly exceeding immigration, deaths elevated, and births declining, Ohio’s fertility rate is no longer high enough to buoy the state’s population. It’s too soon to tell if these trends will mark a new normal or whether population growth will rebound to its anemic, pre-pandemic growth rate, but the current demographic situation is bleak, and Ohio can no longer afford to wait. Instead, Ohio must be proactive by pursuing competitive tax code reforms, streamlining regulations to help Americans move to and work in Ohio, and calling on Washington to create state-based visas for high-skilled immigration. At the federal level, Ohio’s delegation on Capitol Hill should be frontline pushing reforms that will help attract more skilled workers. 

Representative John Curtis proposed a state-based visa plan several years ago that would have created state-based worker visas for Ohio and other struggling states. If the Curtis plan had been approved and effective today, Ohio would have gained 5,000 people instead of losing 8,000 (see map below) and its demographic outlook would not look quite so grim. In fact, eight of the 18 states that lost population in the most recent census would have benefited and the entire Midwest would have gained population instead of losing it.

States across the country deserve more say in the fight to attract international talent. They should join the chorus of voices asking for commonsense state-based visas.

Logan Kolas is an economic policy analyst with The Buckeye Institute’s Economic Research Center and the author of “Ohio’s Global Fight for Talent.”