When the going gets tough, the tough do not hold more hearings. But since Republicans in the House want to spend the summer studying immigration, here are two questions for them:

If Republican voters and talk-show hosts weren’t screaming “amnesty” at you, could you work out a compromise with the Senate?

Just how smart is it to keep dodging this issue?

By smart, of course, I don’t mean what would be good in the long term for your party, much less your country. You can’t afford such distractions. You must consider the big picture: your job.

You’re afraid you’ll lose in November unless you’re as tough on immigration as Brian Bilbray, who just got elected in San Diego by sounding like Lou Dobbs. But he got only 49 percent of the vote in a Republican district, and he was blessed with a verbal gaffe by an opponent who seemed to be encouraging immigrants to vote illegally. Don’t count on this in your race.

Pay more attention to a recent national poll of likely Republican voters conducted by the Tarrance Group for the Manhattan Institute. These Republicans liked the House’s seal-the-border approach to immigration less than the comprehensive approach favored by the Senate and President Bush: combine tough enforcement with a chance for the illegal immigrants already here to pay a fine, become legal and eventually earn citizenship.

You call this amnesty, and nearly 40 percent of the poll’s respondents agreed. Yet 75 percent of all the Republicans favored it anyway.

If you’re still terrified of the A-word, consider how Republicans defined it in the poll. It made a big difference how an immigrant went about applying for legal status. If he could apply while staying in America, that was considered a form of amnesty by nearly 60 percent of the respondents. But if he had to go back to his native country and apply, then only 22 percent called it amnesty.

To Mike Pence, that poll result is a “window of opportunity.” Pence, the Indiana Republican who leads the House conservative caucus, is dead set against the Senate immigration bill, which he considers amnesty. But he thinks there’s a deal to be made before the election by giving immigrants an incentive to go to their home countries in order to get a visa.

Pence wants to beef up border security immediately, and then, once the measures are in place two years later, open up “Ellis Island centers” in Mexico and Central American countries that would quickly match foreign workers with American companies.

If the worker passed background checks and an American employer promised to hire him, he’d get a high-tech ID card and a guest-worker visa. During the first three years of the program, there’d be no cap on the number of visas: workers could get visas as long as they had jobs waiting for them.

Negotiating the details of this plan would be tricky, particularly giving immigrants the chance they deserve to eventually become more than just temporary workers. It would require an increase in the number of future slots available for permanent residents and citizens, and that increase would be a tough sell with some Republicans.

But if you’re trying to please the voters who object mainly to the presence of illegal immigrants, Pence’s plan would work. Besides inducing illegal immigrants here to come out of the shadows, the program would also discourage new immigrants from sneaking across the border. Why bother if you could get a visa along with a job?

American companies wouldn’t have to break the law to hire immigrants, and they’d face new sanctions if they employed anyone without the right ID and visa. The result would be a more secure border, fewer illegal immigrants, more legal workers for companies — and not as many Republicans complaining about amnesty.

You might still think it’s safer to dodge the whole issue until after the election, but that’s a risk too. Republicans rank immigration right below terrorism and national security in their hierarchy of issues. They think the current system is a mess, and they blame Washington for it.

That means you. Maybe, after the hearings this summer, you can plead with voters in November for just a little more time to solve the problem — one more reprieve. But the voters may figure that’s an even worse form of amnesty.