I don't understand why the function-level imports cannot be removed.

Wouldn't it be possible to do something like this:

from errno import ENOENT as _ENOENT, ENOTDIR as _ENOTDIR
def _execvpe(file, args, env=None):
   pass # Use _ENOENT and _ENOTDIR in this code

BTW. it is IMO rather strange to close issues as wont fix when there is a 
real error in supported and not deprecated code.