andy753421 writes “Wired is running an article about ‘Rural Sourcing, an IT company that outsources not to India or Mexico, but rural America.’ The company targets IT workers in rural location due to lower costs of living, ‘The company charges $35 to $50 per hour for IT expertise, which may cost around $100 in New York City. While this is no match for outsourcing rates in India, clients benefit from local accents and similar time zones — not to mention the absence of stigma sometimes attached to farming jobs out to foreign countries.’ The article also points out several other innovative attempts at outsourcing such as Lakota Express and Seacode, which was previously covered on slashdot.”

Thursday, August 11, 2005; Posted: 1:07 p.m. EDT (17:07 GMT)

EL PASO, Texas (AP) — Texas has become the fourth state to have a non-white majority population, the U.S. Census Bureau said Thursday, a trend driven by a surging number of Latinos moving to the state.

According to the population estimates based on the 2000 Census, about 50.2 percent of Texans are now minorities. In the 2000 Census, minorities made up about 47 percent of the population in the second-largest state.

Texas joins California, New Mexico and Hawaii as states with majority-minority populations — with Latinos the largest group in every state but Hawaii, where it is Asian-Americans.

Five other states — Maryland, Mississippi, Georgia, New York and Arizona — aren’t far behind, with about 40 percent minorities.

Public policy analysts said these states and the country as a whole need to bring minority education and professional achievement to the levels of whites. Otherwise, these areas risk becoming poorer and less competitive.

William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., said lawmakers need to start with immigration reform, while striving to bring minorities’ education and salary levels in line with Anglos.

“Immigration is good for the United States … it’s important for us to keep our doors open, but we need to keep an eye on the people coming in,” Frey said. “While initially it will be a state problem, eventually it will be a national issue, and education is the best way to deal with it.”

Complications from the cultural shift aren’t likely to be exclusive to states that already have majority-minority populations, Frey said.

Nevada, for instance, has seen a massive influx of minorities in the last 15 years, reducing the percentage of Anglos since the 1990s from nearly 80 percent to about 60 percent. Such a rapid shift is likely to cause growing pains that include trying to balance the needs of a bigger and younger minority community with an aging Anglo community, Frey said.

“That’s the kind of state that is going to have to deal with quick transition,” Frey said.

Though some areas may never see this shift, the country as a whole is expected to continue the trend first noticed more than a decade ago.

The nation should be more than half minorities by 2050, said Steve Murdock, a demographer at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

“If you look in the 1990s, in every one of the 50 states, non-Anglo Latino populations grew faster than Anglo populations,” Murdock said. “It’s a very pervasive pattern.”

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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• Standard Number: 60-2.1
• Standard Title: Title, purpose and scope.
• SubPart Number: A
• SubPart Title: General
________________________________________
(a) This part shall also be known as “Revised Order No. 4,'’ and shall cover nonconstruction contractors. Section 60-1.40 of this chapter, affirmative action compliance programs, requires that within 120 days from the commencement of a contract each prime contractor or subcontractor with 50 or more employees and (1) a contract of $50,000 or more; or (2) Government bills of lading which, in any 12-month period, total or can reasonably be expected to total $50,000 or more; or (3) who serves as a depository of Government funds in any amount; or (4) who is a financial institution which is an issuing and paying agent for U.S. savings bonds and savings notes in any amount, develop a written affirmative action compliance program for each of its establishments. A review of compliance surveys indicates that many contractors do not have affirmative action programs on file at the time an establishment is visited by a compliance investigator. This part details the review procedure and the results of a contractor’s failure to develop and maintain an affirmative action program and then sets forth detailed guidelines to be used by contractors and the Government in developing and judging these programs as well as the good faith effort required to transform the programs from paper commitments to equal employment opportunity. Subparts B and C of this part are concerned with affirmative action plans only.
(b) Relief, including back pay where appropriate, for members of an affected class who by virtue of past discrimination continue to suffer the present effects of that discrimination, shall be provided in the conciliation agreement entered into pursuant to 60-60.6 of this title. An “affected class'’ problem must be remedied in order for a contractor to be considered in compliance. Section 60-2.2 herein pertaining to an acceptable affirmative action program is also applicable to the failure to remedy discrimination against members of an “affected class.'’

http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/cfr/41cfr/toc_Chapt60/60_2.1.htm