But what about E-Verify? If businesses were actually required to ascertain the legal status of their employees, those businesses would certainly identify millions of workers holding jobs in the United States illegally. What would happen to them? Candidates have already pledged that there will be no mass deportations of illegal immigrants who have not been convicted of multiple serious crimes. If they deport people identified by E-Verify, they’re breaking that pledge. And if they don’t, they’re enacting the type of “amnesty” they also promised to avoid.

On Tuesday evening, I posed the “what then” question to a key Republican, one who has thought a lot about immigration. His response was essentially that there are some questions that need not be answered right now, and this is one of them.

But the time to answer the question will come.