>>Any measure that permits those who entered illegally to benefit from that illegal act is amnesty.<<
Yes, it is, which is exactly why the eventual resolution to the illegal immigration issue is going to involve at least some limited form of amnesty.
We simply aren’t going to send every single person here illegally today back across the border someday, nor are we going to see a bill passed that results in every single one of them “self-deporting” via, say, removing all employment opportunities for them. People can argue tell they’re blue in the face that we need to do exactly that, but it’s not going to happen.
Our presidential candidates are forced to tie themselves in knots trying to avoid stating the obvious so they don’t tick off the “No Amnesty” crowd amongst the base. Hillary destroys her email records and her base applauds her aggressiveness in taking on her opponents, while we force our candidates to declare support for an unattainable goal lest we cross them off our lists.
Again, every single GOP candidate is for amnesty in at least some form when their views are compared to a strict “no amnesty” demand. Every single one of them, including Senator Cruz. You will have no one left on your “list” so what’s the point? If you ever do happen upon a candidate who truly believes in a complete “no amnesty” position they wouldn’t win a single state; they’d be destroyed by ads demonstrating their clear heartlessness, if only in a dozen or so cases overall. Could they concede those dozen cases? Not without losing the “no amnesty” crowd, they couldn’t.
Good luck coming up with such a candidate.
Amnesty means past crimes are ignored, and being henceforth law-abiding is required. Most “amnesty” proponents don’t really mean amnesty, they mean open borders, as no future crimes will be prosecuted either.