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This isn't the other side of the e-verify coin. Let's call it a supplement to my last column.

There wasn't much feedback on my support for compulsory e-verify for businesses and particularly farmers.

I proposed that requiring the use of e-verify for farm workers would stop the institutionalization of a perpetual farm worker underclass, invigorate innovation in farming methods and tools and would relieve the social impact that comes with supplementing the financial needs of the farm worker underclass.

First, I don't want anyone to think I was demonizing farmers as the ones who have created the farm worker underclass. I'd rather blame the people in charge of immigration policy and enforcement.

Nonchalance toward enforcement of current immigration law and the lack of policy integration among various bureaucracies are the main problems; not the "evil farmers." E-verify will take some of the discretion out of the politicians' hands and lead to better compliance with current law.

I did get some personal and very useful feedback from one local farmer. After the column appeared Wayne Kirschenman of Kirschenman Enterprises invited me to take a look at some of his ag operations.

Kirschenman took exception with the idea that hand labor could be mechanized. He showed me several specific crops that required hand labor and precluded mechanization.

Watermelons, for example, ripen over the course of several days. The consumer's demand for quality won't tolerate picking all watermelons at one time with a machine. Some would be too bland, some would be too soft and only a few would be just right.

Therefore, they must be picked in waves as they ripen. This requires a subjective evaluation of the entire field three or more times to harvest only the melons that are ready.

Machines can't do that, Kirschenman pointed out. I agree but I would add, "...yet."

Vineyards and orchards also require extraordinary and delicate handwork. Thinning blooms on nectarines or hand clipping bunches of grapes are techniques developed to optimize fruit quality.

If the labor to do those tasks suddenly dried up, there is no mechanical substitute that is immediately ready to deploy. Even if the consequences were only lower product quality and a less consistent product, the impact would be significant on producers and consumers.

I understand the need for labor in production. But I would think that simply being able to imagine the labor-less scenario would stir some agriculture industrialist to start developing solutions now.

Indeed, Kirschenman pointed out that growers do support privately funded research that impacts production methods and equipment development.

Some of the passion enflaming the undocumented worker controversy is that there are only two alternatives being argued. Basically we must choose between deporting them all and giving them amnesty.

Kirschenman proposed an immigration policy solution I haven't heard before. It ought to become part of the discussion.

Somewhere between "comprehensive immigration reform" and "deport them all now" is an alternative that would expedite the process of making undocumented workers legal to work in the U.S. Not citizens; legal foreign workers.

The H-2A visa already exists. But decades of neglect and lack of leadership on immigration policy and enforcement have made that instrument nearly useless. Yet it is the seed of a different approach to the undocumented worker issue.

The concept would require all the parties to take some responsibility and specific action. Workers, Kern County employers, the U.S. and foreign governments would all have to make a commitment to the success of a solution like this.

Yet as we talk about a method of documenting the 30,000 undocumented agricultural workers in our county we necessarily give assent to the concept of a farm worker underclass. And documenting the undocumented would only continue to delay the genius of innovation in agriculture by maintaining a pool of cheap labor.

So I haven't abandoned those three original propositions. But I did come away from my visit with Wayne Kirschenman with a greater knowledge of agricultural production and a better appreciation for the complex nature of the issue of undocumented workers.

There are no easy solutions. I expect animosity will continue to be fomented by every sort of special interest. It's up to us to keep the politicians -- local, state and federal -- focused on a solution that addresses every aspect of the issue with integrity.

-- Ric Llewellyn is one of three community columnists whose work appears here every Saturday. These are the opinions of Llewellyn, not necessarily The Californian. You can email him at rllewellyn@bakersfield.com.

Next week: Heather Ijames.