So the newest GOP gambit is to blame Democrats for blocking the Republicans in the House last December from downgrading illegal presence in the US from a felony to a misdemeanor-- in fact, they are going to run ads in Spanish to that effect.  

So let's look at the Congressional Record for WHY Congressman Sensenbrenner initially supported dropping the penalty from a felony to a misdemeanor. Was it out of concern that this penalty would be too harsh? Don't bet on it.   Read the transcript and you see the following:

Mr. Chairman, under current law, illegal entry into the United States makes an alien subject to a Federal criminal misdemeanor with a maximum penalty of 6 months in prison...

In the base bill, the maximum penalty for illegal entry was increased to a year and a day, and the same penalty was set for unlawful presence, to make the enhancements for these offenses consistent with the other penalty enhancements of the bill.

The administration subsequently requested the penalty for these crimes be lowered to 6 months. Making the first offense a felony, as the base bill would do, would require a grand jury indictment, a trial before a district court judge and a jury trial.

Also because it is a felony, the defendant would be able to get a lawyer at public expense if the defendant could not afford the lawyer. These requirements would mean that the government would seldom if ever actually use the new penalties. By leaving these offenses as misdemeanors, more prosecutions are likely to be brought against those aliens whose cases merit criminal prosecution.

For this reason, the amendment returns the sentence for illegal entry to its current 6 months and sets the penalty for unlawful presence at the same level.

So any reconsideration of not applying felony penalties to immigrants was not out of humane considerations, but out of the cynical view that the government can deny the right to a trial and other due process guarantees if they make the charges a "misdemeanor."  This is a bow to the impossibility of revving up millions of criminal trials, but it's all about how to most effectively criminalize undocumented workers. 

These "misdemeanors" would still have had six month jail terms attached to them, and could be handed out in quick judge-run trials without any counsel for the immigrants required by law.   Somehow I don't think most immigrant families are going to be impressed by the argument that somehow the Democrats forced the GOP to vote for the draconian bill last fall, when, really, all the GOP wanted to do was run mass military-tribunal style trials under the rubric of "misdemeanor" charges.