Text Tab changes & to & a m p ; in links–workaround?

When I add links from the visual tab using the link button, no problem. But when I add links in html working in the text tab, WordPress changes them. The links still work in the sense that if you click on them, they go to the correct url, but in this case the & is followed by letters and numbers as code for an affiliate program. When the sequence is interrupted by the addition of “amp;” of course the affiliate code is no longer valid.

There are a variety of reasons why I don’t want to use the visual tab. Due to the way the shortcode I am using in this theme works and the volume of very similar links I am adding, it is much simpler to work in the raw html. Is there any way to make WordPress stop changing the link code without resorting to working in the visual tab?

Here’s an example of how one of my links should look:https://www.asite.com/product?crid=Product%20One&ugb_id=9999999-888888&pid=123456 where 123456 is an affiliate code.

Here is what WordPress converts it to (I’m putting in spaces to keep it from converting back): https://www.asite.com/product?crid=Product%20One & a m p ; ugb_id=9999999-888888 & a m p ; pid=123456

Help with this will be deeply appreciated.