It sounds like a New Mexican’s nightmare: What if you had to cook with chiles imported from another country, rather than grown in Hatch?
Terry Adams, a farmer who cultivates chiles and onions in the Hatch Valley, said the grim scenario is becoming more likely as profit margins become increasingly slim, wages rise and locally grown products compete with imported goods.
“Farmers are going to start going broke,” Adams said. “Vegetables such as chile and the fresh onions that we grow here, it’s all hand-harvested, so it’s very expensive.”
She also noted a lack of farmworkers in the state as farmers age out of the business, without a younger generation to replace them. To harvest her labor-intensive crops amid a dearth of local workers, Adams has turned to the federal H-2A visa program, which helps fill farm labor gaps by providing temporary and seasonal visas for foreign workers.
It’s a statewide trend. New Mexico’s producers have grown increasingly reliant on temporary and seasonal workers from other countries, according to data reported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The program, which has drawn criticism over a complicated application process, abuse of workers and rising costs for employers, has long prompted calls for reform. An overhaul may be coming — the Trump administration is promising changes — but the potential effects remain uncertain. Program changes could send waves through the state’s agricultural industry.
New Mexico hosted nearly 1,700 H-2A workers in fiscal year 2024, according to the Department of Agriculture — a number that has nearly quadrupled in the past decade. About a third were farm laborers working in fields, nurseries or greenhouses. Another 29% operated agricultural equipment, and about one in five drove heavy tractor-trailers.
“It’s having workers who know how to do this work, who can do this work and are willing to come and do it,” said Leonardo Castañeda, director of the Office of New Americans at the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions.
Rise in New Mexico H-2A workers
Adams said her farm was among the first in the Hatch Valley to find workers through the H-2A visa program.
She was initially hesitant. Despite farming in the valley for more than 40 years, she was daunted by the paperwork until she found an agent in New York who could help her navigate the system.
First, employers have to prove there are no U.S. workers interested in the jobs they have to offer. Then their applications must go through layers of multi-agency approvals to certify the jobs.
New Mexico’s agricultural producers are looking for people to harvest chile, herd livestock and operate equipment.
The first year Adams and her husband used the visa program, they brought in 29 H-2A workers to harvest their chile and onion fields. They’ve seen a tenfold increase.
Adams Produce had nearly 300 H-2A workers in fiscal year 2024, according to data from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ employer data hub. Those workers make up about half of the farm’s harvest crew.
“I would be out of business if I didn’t use the H-2A program,” Adams said. “The whole valley probably would be, too.”
Over the past eight years, she has seen other Hatch farms increasingly rely on the program.
Chile is a labor-intensive crop. Machine harvesters damage the fruit, so hand-picking is required.
Adams’ onions are also hand-picked. While hardy “storage onions” can withstand a battering from harvest machinery, Adams grows softer, milder varieties that would be scratched and nicked.
New Mexico’s share of H-2A workers is tiny in comparison to major agricultural states like California, Florida, Georgia and Washington, according to data reported by the American Immigration Council. Single counties in Florida or California hire as many H-2A workers as the entire state of New Mexico.
But the workers are crucial here. The farmworker shortage causes big problems. The Department of Workforce Solutions reported in 2021 and 2023 farmers were planting fewer acres of chile and missing out on tens of thousands of dollars in profits because of a lack of workers.
While a handful of farms in Northern New Mexico hired the temporary visa holders in 2024, federal data shows the majority of the seasonal workers went to Southern New Mexico. The largest shares were located in Deming, Dexter, Hatch and Roswell.
‘There needs to be a balance’
The minimum wage prescribed by the H-2A visa program is higher than the state’s minimum wage, making the seasonal jobs attractive, Castañeda said. Hourly wages paid out to the foreign agricultural workers in New Mexico last year hovered around $16 an hour, but some positions paid double that or more — well above New Mexico’s minimum of $12 per hour.
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The type of work requested for H-2A temporary agricultural workers in New Mexico.
Workers hired through the visa program are also entitled to certain unusual benefits, including housing and transportation, at no cost to the worker.
Adams pays the seasonal visa workers a little over $17 per hour. But her hourly cost is closer to $22 when she accounts for housing and transportation.
She pays her local workers the same rate as those with H-2A visas.
Her visa workers live in motels, farmhouses and other homes that she fixed up. During the winter, she makes sure the worker housing meets exacting federal standards — a certain number of stovetops, showers and toilets, based on occupant numbers — and handles any maintenance.
The program’s requirements pose challenges. As hiring of the visa workers has increased in New Mexico — particularly in Doña Ana and Luna counties, where use surged 65% in 2023 — farmers are struggling to find suitable housing for their seasonal guest workers that meets federal standards, the Department of Workforce Solution reported.
In other countries, employers aren’t bound by the same requirements, Adams said, undercutting local farmers.
“You want to pay people good wages because it’s very hard work, but there needs to be a balance,” she said. “We can’t continue to pay high wages, and yet, our markets for our products are break-even.”
‘Power in the hands of the employer’
Despite the U.S. agricultural industry’s heavy reliance on foreign workers, the H-2A program is rife with abuse, according to a November 2024 report from the Government Accountability Office.
Of more than 2,000 employers investigated by the Department of Labor, 84% had violations, largely regarding worker pay.
When those violations are found, however, the department struggles to ensure back pay is paid out “in a timely manner,” the report states.
Abigail Kerfoot, deputy legal director at the binational workers rights group Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, said her organization receives reports from migrant workers claiming employers fail to pay overtime or pay wages at all, among other wage violations.
Other reports point to fraud; differential treatment and pay based on gender; health and safety violations — such as workers lacking personal protective equipment or working in extreme weather; or discriminatory conduct, like forbidding workers to speak Spanish on a job site.
Centro de los Derechos del Migrante operates Contratados, an online forum — Kerfoot described it as “like a Yelp for migrant workers” — to crowdsource information about job opportunities.
“Unfortunately, these visa programs really, I think, put the power in the hands of the employer, the recruiter, the supervisor,” Kerfoot said.
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Certified H-2A temporary agricultural workers in New Mexico.
‘They need those workers today’
It seems counterintuitive: If H-2A workers are more expensive than others and enjoy more entitlements, such as transportation and housing, why hire them?
The answer: New Mexico’s agricultural producers need the workers, said Jay Lillywhite, associate dean of New Mexico State University’s College of Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences and director of the Agricultural Experiment Station.
The phenomenon isn’t limited to New Mexico. A 2024 report from the American Immigration Council found a significant increase in demand for H-2A workers across the country.
In part, the shortage is pushing New Mexico farmers toward mechanization to limit the number of workers it takes to bring in their crops, Lillywhite said.
“It’s not because farmers are trying to put people out of work; it’s because they can’t find people who want to do the work,” he said.
But mechanization can’t happen overnight.
Lillywhite used New Mexico’s signature crop as an example: While building a machine to harvest chile might be relatively straightforward, farmers seeking to mechanize the harvesting process would also have to develop chile plants with attributes that better tolerate machine harvesting.
“What you’re seeing is, individuals [thinking], ‘I need labor to grow my chile or grow my onions or grow my pecans’ — whatever it is,” Lillywhite said.
“Because of that, they’re willing to pay more — or have to pay more — just to be able to put their crop in,” he added.
At the state Department of Workforce Solutions — which serves as the on-the-ground oversight agency for the H-2A visa program in New Mexico — Castañeda has seen this dynamic play out firsthand.
In many cases, he said, hiring foreign guest workers is “sort of the only way” farmers will be able to harvest crops on time.
U.S. Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer summed up the need during a June 24 speech to the Western Governors’ Association during its annual meeting in Santa Fe: “They need those workers today,” she said. “Actually, they needed them yesterday.”
‘Goal is a 100% legal workforce’
In early June, almost a dozen workers at a Southern New Mexico dairy were swept up in an immigration enforcement raid.
A few days later, however, in a post on Truth Social, President Donald Trump announced “changes are coming” to enforcement of immigration policies in certain industries.
“Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, longtime workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,” Trump wrote. “In many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs.”
He added, “This is not good.”
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, who also appeared at the Western Governors’ Association meeting in Santa Fe, said at a June 23 news conference the goal is a 100% legal workforce in the nation.
The H-2A visa program is one of the ways to get there, she said.
“I was on a call earlier today with the White House, with my counterparts in the White House, discussing how we can use tools like the H-2A visa program, how we make it easier to use, more efficient and to again move towards that 100% legal workforce,” Rollins said.
But Rollins sees gaps in the H-2A program. She said the process of getting approved visas is especially onerous for small and midsized farms.
Although she said major, long-term reforms to the visa program are in the hands of Congress, not the White House, the administration is making plans for short-term changes to simplify it and make it more efficient.
Chavez-DeRemer said June 24 she was planning to work with the State Department, Department of Agriculture and Homeland Security Department to create a “one-stop shop” for employers looking for H-2A workers.
Call for stronger worker protections
The administration isn’t alone in looking at changes.
Congressional delegates in Western states reintroduced legislation in May proposing a series of reforms, including extending the visa period from one to three years and creating a pathway to citizenship.
“The men and women who work America’s farms feed the nation. However, in the past few years, we’ve seen labor shortages contribute to high food prices,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., said in a statement. “As economic chaos and confusion continues, it is essential we provide stability to this critical workforce.”
The House Appropriations Committee also moved to increase the number of visas available through a amendment to the funding bill for the Homeland Security Department, a move criticized by Centro de los Derechos del Migrante due to its lack of additional worker protections.
The Biden administration took a whack at increasing support for H-2A workers in 2024, adding protections for people speaking up about their working conditions, requiring seat belts in vans, and explicitly prohibiting employers from seizing worker visas and passports in an effort to discourage human trafficking.
The “Farmworker Protection Act,” immediately controversial among agricultural employers, was already tied up in court, but the Trump administration recently announced it wouldn’t be enforcing the rule.
The American Farm Bureau Federation celebrated the suspension of what it considered an “overreaching” regulation and urged Congress to fully overturn the rule.
While little about the future of the H-2A program is certain, Kerfoot said she worries any changes will continue to put “a lot of power in the hands of employers, as opposed to workers.”
“Our stance for a very long time has been that these visa programs should not be expanded in the absence of stronger worker protections,” she said, “given how abusive the system already is.”