Pia Orrenius is a labor economist working on regional economic growth and demographic change. She manages the regional group in the Dallas Fed Research Department and is executive editor of the quarterly publicationSouthwest Economy. Her academic research focuses on the labor market impacts of immigration, unauthorized immigration and U.S. immigration policy. She is coauthor of the book Beside the Golden Door: U.S. Immigration Reform in a New Era of Globalization (2010, AEI Press).
Pia Orrenius is affiliated with several academic institutions. She is research fellow at the Tower Center for Political Studies at Southern Methodist University and at the IZA Institute of Labor in Bonn, Germany, as well as adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Orrenius is also adjunct professor at Baylor University (Dallas campus), where she teaches in the executive MBA program. Orrenius was senior economist on the Council of Economic Advisers in the Executive Office of the President, Washington D.C., in 2004–05, where she advised the Bush administration on labor, health and immigration issues. She holds a PhD in economics from the University of California at Los Angeles and bachelor degrees in economics and Spanish from the University of Illinois at Urbana—Champaign.
PB#03: Central Americans in the U.S. Labor Market: Recent Trends and Policy Impacts
Immigration from Central America to the United States is rising rapidly. Much of this inflow is unauthorized. Violence and corruption in Central America is affecting both the volume and composition of current migrants who are less educated, less likely to speak English, and who face tougher border and interior enforcement than Central Americans who immigrated in the 1980s and 1990s faced. We offer a number of policy recommendations aimed at expanding legal avenues to accommodate immigrant flows from Central America while regularizing those already in the U.S.