Yeah why would you want to fix the system and make it easy for people to do things correctly and detect when they have made a mistake. Oh no wait that's actually exactly what you'd want.
They didn't make a mistake. They clearly were aware that a J1 and a visa waiver weren't the same thing. These were supposedly educated people. Why did they think the J1 existed? I would be slightly more sympathetic if their first language wasn't Ebglish and they weren't highly educated.
- automatically stop people from getting visa waivers if they applied for J-1
- save space in detention
- save the time by not dealing with such cases at the airport
- prevent people from getting treated badly
- prevent articles like this from being written
Or you know... keep throwing the book. That works very well as you can see.