What "penalty" are you referring to? If they are allowed to stay, they are being rewarded.
How about this for a penalty: 5 years in prison?
What good does that do? How about 5 years of military service or community service cleaning up our cities and building infrastructure or working in youth programs?? Yall really do have rocks for brains don't you?
The good it does is the fact that it's a real penalty that would discourage further illegal immigration. Allowing them to join the service and even get paid by the taxpayers while they violate our laws is not a penalty. It's a reward.
Allowing them to stay under any circumstances is antithetical to the principles on which our immigration policy is based. In 1965, the most liberal president in American history signed into law immigration reform legislation that is based on the principle that immigration into the US should be based on what America and Americans need from the rest of the world and not what the rest of the world needs from us.
As a result of this reform, the vast majority of illegals now in the country would never have been permitted to even apply for an immigration visa and would never have been welcome in this country under any circumstances because we simply don't need them. There is no way these people can be allowed to stay without contradicting and violating the very principles on which our immigration policies are based. No rational compromise is possible.