SHARONVILLE — Greater Cincinnati’s Uzbek community has grown from a handful of families two decades ago into thousands of households across Southwest Ohio, and a debate over commercial driver’s licenses for foreign-born truck drivers has now put that community in the statewide spotlight.
Community leaders say many families arrived after 2020, leaving New York City and other places for more affordable housing, schools they preferred and fewer pandemic restrictions. Census figures from 2024 put the Uzbekistan-born population at about 1,500 in Greater Cincinnati and about 3,800 statewide, while local leaders estimate roughly 4,000 Uzbek families now live in southern Ohio when U.S.-born children are included.
The community’s footprint is visible well beyond trucking. Uzbek restaurants, stores and bakeries operate in Sharonville, West Chester, Mason and Blue Ash, and residents work in education, manufacturing and hospitality while their children attend schools across the region. An organization formed around 2017, the Hamkor Uz Cincinnati Association, helps newcomers with jobs, paperwork and school enrollment and coordinates weddings, funerals and cultural events.
The group’s biggest project is a mosque under construction off State Route 48 in Maineville. Plans reviewed by Hamilton Township call for a building of about 19,000 square feet with a two-story prayer space, a mezzanine and a classroom, funded by donations from Uzbek families across Ohio. Leaders say a cemetery and a school could follow, depending on fundraising.
Trucking, however, is where the scrutiny has landed. More than 1,200 Uzbek residents hold non-domiciled commercial licenses in Ohio, according to the state Department of Public Safety, and the Ohio BMV is downgrading the commercial licenses of 133 Uzbek drivers who do not meet new federal guidelines. In June the state revoked commercial licenses for about 1,200 foreign drivers overall after federal rules narrowed which immigration statuses qualify.
State Rep. Michelle Teska, a Clearcreek Township Republican whose district includes Maineville, has backed legislation on English proficiency for foreign drivers, and a fatal crash involving an Uzbek driver from Maineville that killed a 21-year-old man has intensified the local debate. Warren County’s prosecutor says his office has had to hire more Uzbek translators for court cases.
A Cincinnati immigration lawyer who represents some of the drivers says appeals have already reinstated some licenses, and she argues that many fraud claims grow out of misunderstandings about drivers whose English is functional for the road but limited in conversation. Community members, for their part, say they are focused on belonging: as one association board member put it through a translator, they now consider Ohio their motherland.