Free online English courses available for immigrant workers in New Mexico, state officials announce

Local employers, adult education providers and other organizations around New Mexico now have no-cost access to online English courses to help workers and job seekers learn English tailored to their lines of work, state workforce officials announced Wednesday.

The Workforce English program comes via the state Department of Workforce Solutions’ Office of New Americans division, which was codified legislatively and signed into law earlier this year by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.

According to a news release, the new program partners with the EnGen English instruction platform and provides more than 170 career-aligned courses curated for fields in high demand — healthcare, energy and early childhood education — through virtual workshops and multilingual tutoring. 

“This is precisely the sort of practical program that the Office of New Americans was designed to bring to the workers and businesses of our state,” Workforce Solutions Secretary Sarita Nair said in a statement. “When employees have the language skills to grow and thrive in their jobs, everybody wins.”

The program grows out of surveys and focus groups conducted between November 2025 and January 2026 by the University of New Mexico and three immigrant advocacy groups in coordination with the agency that found two-thirds of immigrants and refugees surveyed expressed the need for work-specific English training.

One of the immigrant advocacy organizations, the Albuquerque-based Encuentro, is utilizing the program with two groups beginning-level adult English.

“This initiative gives us the resources and scale to serve multilingual learners far beyond what was previously possible,” Teresa Guevara, director of Educational Programs at Encuentro, said in a statement.

Immigrants make up significant portions of jobs in key industries throughout the New Mexico economy — construction jobs (24%), manufacturing (18%), healthcare and social services (13%) and education (13%) — according to data from the American Immigration Council.

“Removing language barriers unlocks the incredible potential of New Mexico’s immigrant and refugee workforce,” Leonardo Castañeda, director of the Office of New Americans, said in a statement. “Investing in our multilingual talent helps local employers build resilient teams while driving economic prosperity across our entire state.”