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Secretary Sonderling Tours New Mexico Green Chile Farm, Hears H-2A Labor Concerns

September 14, 2026 · USDepartmentofLabor · 0:03:01

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling toured the green chile fields of Seco Spice, a chile and vegetable wholesaler, with owner Edward Olivas, according to the Department of Labor video (transcript rendered from Arabic auto-captions). Olivas told him chile picking is labor-intensive work and that most fields are picked by hand, and finding dependable workers is one of the operation’s biggest problems, as shown in the video.

Sonderling said he visited to learn about the industry and hear the issues affecting farmers and workers, and that the Labor Department is interested in how to provide more workers and set policies that benefit agriculture, according to the video. He said New Mexico’s red and green chile carries local pride and that the department wants people to see agriculture as a high-skilled, well-paid career with many jobs available, as stated in his remarks.

Olivas said Seco Spice hires locally when it can but that its most reliable workers often come through the H-2A program, and he asked that the process be streamlined and given more flexibility, according to the video. The video noted that New Mexico currently has 61 employers and 1,456 total beneficiaries in the H-2A program, per U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data. Sonderling said the Labor Department has made reforms to make it easier for farmers to get legal labor for seasonal needs, saying the worst outcome is American crops going unharvested for lack of workers, as stated in his remarks.

Why it matters

The farm visit puts the Labor Department’s H-2A streamlining pitch in front of a grower whose core complaint — dependable seasonal labor — is the exact problem the program changes are meant to solve.

Sources: USDepartmentofLabor, “Secretary Keith Sonderling visits New Mexico green chile farm”, 2026-09-14 (official upload, embedded above; published 2026-09-14). Transcript via Supadata (private research store, paraphrased and attributed, not republished). All figures and characterizations as stated by the speakers.