This opinion piece was first published by Cleveland.com.

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Federal policymakers have long held a firm monopoly on U.S. immigration — but that needs to change. State and local officials deserve a seat at the immigration policy table, if only to make clearer to Washington’s central planners which kinds of skilled labor their communities and employers actually need.

Instead of a one-size-fits-all immigration scheme drafted inside the Beltway, the United States should design a collaborative state and federal visa program that gives states a say in admitting high-skilled workers to fill local labor market needs. This commonsense, state-based visa idea is gaining bipartisan traction across the country and here in Ohio.

Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb and Akron Mayor Daniel Horrigan, both Democrats, have called for heartland visas to help increase skilled-labor immigration in their cities. And Republican Gov. Mike DeWine has acknowledged the critical need to attract more “highly skilled workers to fill the jobs that Intel and other companies are creating in Ohio” and praised The Buckeye Institute for recently recommending “practical solutions” to fill those jobs through state-based visa programs.

Both proposals would empower state and local governments on immigration policy and allow Ohio to increase skilled-labor immigration to benefit its businesses, communities, and families.

Businesses thrive where they can produce the goods and provide the services their customers want at prices their customers can afford. To do this, they need a talented and dependable labor pool with the requisite skills to make their products at competitive rates. And when that labor pool dries up, companies move elsewhere, taking their jobs, their civic leaders, and their state and local tax revenues with them.

On the other hand, businesses and communities with strong skilled-labor workforces tend to flourish. As Ohio continues to train and upskill its current workforce, highly trained and skilled immigrants can augment it and — given their entrepreneurial track record — create new workforces of their own. Immigrants make up a quarter of American entrepreneurs and found a disproportionate number of start-up enterprises that catalyze new and often better jobs for U.S. workers. Immigrants hold patents at an astonishingly high rate and have a history of making American companies some of the most successful in the world.

With its growing domestic and immigrant populations and not being forced to fend off steep de-industrialization, Columbus has become the bellwether of economic success in Ohio. These benefits have helped spur further economic growth and have made Central Ohio all the more attractive to foreign and domestic firms such as Intel. Beyond Columbus, deepening talent pools in Northeast Ohio and other areas of the state can show how talented workforces — strengthened by skilled immigration — can lure prized investments to benefit all Ohio workers and families.

As state and local officials emulate workforce successes nationwide and double down on pre-existing technological advantages, they should turn to Washington for some labor pool relief. Rather than dictate skilled-labor immigration policy unilaterally from the shores of the Potomac, federal policymakers should invite state and local leaders with a better understanding of local labor market needs to help craft regionalized visa programs specifically tailored to meet those needs.

Mayors Bibb and Horrigan have already seen the wisdom of this approach, and more Ohio mayors and members of the General Assembly should join him and Gov. DeWine by calling on Congress to end the failed federal immigration monopoly.

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