Onshoring: Offshoring is just so pass? After years of American companies sending thousands of jobs overseas - “offshoring” as it’s come to be known, have they finally seen the light? Have bottom-line-oriented companies finally realized that when they call their credit card company, they want to speak with an American, not someone with heavily accented English and a call-center name of “Jessica”? Have they finally realized that hardworking, highly trained Americans can - and do - stack up to anyone in the world?

The Los Angeles Times on Sunday reported that a small, but growing, number of U.S. companies are looking to rural America for new, high-tech facilities ... and to rural Americans to fill the jobs at the sites. One of those companies is Northrop Grumman Corp., which opened an information technology center in seven small communities across the country, ranging from Corsicana, Texas, to Helena, Mont., and the Southwest Virginia town of Lebanon. They could have gone to Bangalore or Mumbai in India, but they chose not to for several reasons.

First, as one of the country’s main defense contractors, much of the work they perform requires a high degree of security, which would have been difficult to achieve outside the United States. Second, when company officials looked at the cost-savings of India versus rural America, they realized the figures were approximately equal. According to the Times, the California-headquartered company calculated that having the jobs in either location would be about 40 percent cheap than the costs in the Los Angeles area. To their credit, Northrop Grumman officials realized that employing Americans at home versus Indians abroad was a no-brainer.

Think this story is just limited to a defense contractor who wanted to maintain good relations with Washington? Think again. Several other high-profile companies have either kept high-paying jobs in America or, in some cases, brought them home after less-than satisfactory experiences abroad. Dell Computer, which led the way in offshoring jobs in early part of this decade to save costs, brought support center jobs back home after customers complained vociferously about the poor customer service they’d received. Jobs once stationed in India came home to Twin Falls, Idaho.

Customer demand also forced consulting giant Accenture to keep support center jobs in the United States. The company is building a document-processing center on the Umatilla Indian reservation in Oregon to serve its clients, who wanted Americans doing work for American companies. There’s also a lesson in this story for policymakers - federal, state and local - in America. Each of the locations, for example, that Northrop Grumman chose for its software centers had the technological and human infrastructure the company required. Broadband Internet service was available in each community, in some cases installed by government as an economic development tool.

The communities themselves had educated work forces willing to undergo the extensive training the company required. And there’s the most important reason for government to invest in this country’s communities. Invest in building out the high-tech infrastructure of the 21st century. Invest in creating the schools needed to train Americans for the 21st century economy. It’s all about keeping the United States of America the world’s leading economic power, maintaining our position as the world’s sole superpower and keeping alive the American dream.