> If you define "criminal" as "any person who has committed a crime", and "crime" as "any illegal act that can be punished by law", then yes.
A criminal is a person who commits a crime.
It is possible, by ceasing to commit crimes and making restitution to society, to return to a state of non-criminality. But while one is still committing a crime, no amount of hand-waving or pearl clutching can make a non-criminal out of someone who is actively committing a crime.
For an illegal immigrant, this would mean either lawful settlement or deportation. Until an illegal immigrant either earns the right to settle or leaves the country, that person is still a criminal.
To carry with the driving violation analogy, if you've ever gone above the speed limit but not been ticketed, then you are still a criminal. You have not ceased committing that crime.
I know people who systematically drive over the speed limit. I disapprove of it, but I wouldn't call them criminals.
You can justify doing that by being sufficiently pedantic about definitions, but I don't think you gain anything in the public debate by lumping "people who speed" in the same category as burglars, murderers, etc. In most discussions, it's not productive to view these people as belonging to the same group.
Our disagreement is not in reasoning but in axioms. Your deduction based on the dictionary definition of "criminal" is valid (I say dictionary definition and not legal definition because, afaik, "criminal" is not a legal term).
But I don't accept dictionaries as the ultimate authority of the meaning of words, just a handy guide. The meaning of a word is whatever people tend to understand that word as. I cannot prove this on the spot, since I'd have to invest time into organizing a survey, but I'm fairly confident that, if you ask a thousand people whether someone who drives over the speed limit is a criminal, a majority of them would say "no" (phrasing of the question will matter probably though).
You can insist on the dictionary being the ultimate source of truth, that is fine. But all that achieves is setting yourself up for gratuitous, avoidable miscommunications. If your theory of language makes communication harder, it seems to undermine the point of language.
What do we call someone who breaks laws, then? We already have other words to designate serious offenders, like "felon" or "convict". And we have offense-specific terms, like "murderer" or "rapist".
The word "criminal" might connote a gravity that offends your sensibilities, but it's accurate. The disconnect arises because modern man sees himself as mostly above the law: Some offenses aren't offenses because (nearly) everyone commits them. We all (hopefully) learn from a young age that this is preposterous: "If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you?"
I think you'll find that honoring the actual meaning of words makes communication easier, not harder.
A criminal is a person who commits a crime.
It is possible, by ceasing to commit crimes and making restitution to society, to return to a state of non-criminality. But while one is still committing a crime, no amount of hand-waving or pearl clutching can make a non-criminal out of someone who is actively committing a crime.
For an illegal immigrant, this would mean either lawful settlement or deportation. Until an illegal immigrant either earns the right to settle or leaves the country, that person is still a criminal.