Technically yes, but sadly in practice rarely enforced. Stand on a street corner in NYC for five minutes and you will see dozens of traffic violations that go unenforced. I don't agree with it, but there is a certain amount of accepted lawlessness here when it comes to driving.
Technically it is ticketable, but they don’t really have a choice. The traffic often moves at a crawl so they might enter the intersection at the beginning of a light cycle and not get further than the crosswalk. If they decide not to move until there is a car length of free space on the other side, cars behind them will honk up a storm. Ticketing them would effectively just be a stochastic congestion tax anyway.
I agree we should ticket anyone who is blocking the box and I wish they still enforced those fines/points. But as drivers become increasingly lawless, especially in NYC, being the only person following the law can make you and the people around you less safe. Similar to driving in a developing country, driving safely in NYC requires learning the actual rules of the road which are not the same as the legal rules.
(Personally I avoid driving and biking in midtown these days because I am uncomfortable breaking the law, but when I do have to choose between following the law and operating safely I choose the latter.)
> If they can't clear the intersection they have no business entering it.
In heavy urban traffic, it is impossible to know if you can clear the intersection before entering it. You can often predict it with some degree of accuracy, but only if you are already familiar with this particular intersection; forget about out of towners being able to make that judgment.