HyLife Foods was sold in bankruptcy court over a month ago now, and there is both good news and uncertainty for the over 1,000 displaced workers in the aftermath of the plant closing.
A large concern with the closing was the fate of nearly 500 legal, nonimmigrant H2B visa-holding workers who were required to be returned to their home countries within 10 days after plant work stopped on May 26. For those who could not find other legal work or change or extend a visa, that short window of time would require selling or transferring of cars, homes, insurance, property and making many important life decisions.
According to Windom EDA Director Tiffany Lamb, the majority of the H2B workers now seem to have found legal employment, mostly in Michigan. Clemons Food Group is located in Coldwater, a city of about 14,000 located north of Fort Wayne, Indiana and about 650 miles from Windom. There are a few families in Windom still working on making or completing that long move to Michigan.
For more details on this story, please see the July 5th edition of the Citizen.
