The Washington Post has published a poll of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents on the state of the GOP. (See the front-page story here, and the complete poll questions and results here.) Immigration makes only one appearance, but the result was important. On a list of issues, respondents were asked whether they thought the party placed too much emphasis on them, too little, or the right amount. Here are the results:

Too much Too little Right amount No opinion a. Second amendment gun rights 16 33 50 2 b. Same-sex marriage 27 32 38 3 c. Abortion 23 34 42 1 d. Federal spending 11 60 28 1 e. Taxes 11 44 44 1 f. The environment 14 38 47 1 g. Illegal immigration 9 61 29 1 h. The economy and jobs 3 60 36 1

In other words, illegal immigration is the area where the largest number of Republicans feel the party isn’t doing enough (and note that only 9 percent thought there was too much emphasis on it). One conclusion is practical — the Republican party simply can’t embrace amnesty, any more than the Democratic party can endorse the Human Life Amendment — certain individual politicians can get away with it, depending on their specific districts, but the respective institutions’ very identities are partly rooted in those positions.

But also, look at the other two issues where GOP voters think there’s been too little emphasis — federal spending and the economy and jobs. This suggests that lots of Republicans see the immigration issue at least partly in the context of the economy, meaning it’s a jobs issue. This is why congressmen Lamar Smith and Steve King held a quasi-hearing earlier this month on immigration and American jobs (“quasi” because the Democratic majority wouldn’t agree to a hearing, so the minority called an unofficial one). As Steve King said at the hearing, “When the federal government has been engaged in [immigration] enforcement, the boon to American workers has been obvious.” Or, in Lamar Smith’s words, “The most effective means we can have of making these jobs [held by illegals] available to American citizens and legal immigrants is U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, worksite enforcement actions.”

To see the immediate economic benefits of immigration enforcement for American workers, see the work of my colleague, Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter Jerry Kammer, here and here.

One simple measure Republicans could champion would be to permit employers to use E-Verify to screen their existing workforce (current law permits its use only for new hires). There would be little political downside and a lot of upside — employers wouldn’t have to do it, and if they did they’d have to screen everyone, not just the ones with dodgy paperwork. But the benefits could be significant, not only by putting the Democrats on the spot, but also, depending on how many employers participated, tens or hundreds of thousands of job openings for legal workers — real jobs with real employers, not phony ones in non-existent congressional districts.

In any case, as David Frum wrote last week, “It’s time for Republicans to revisit the actual economics of immigration rather than the slogans.”