This could also be one of those things where everyone involved recognizes that the policy is incoherent, but any time someone makes a serious move towards reforming it, they're informed by DoD or DHS that aspects of the policy have convenient knock-on effects that they don't want to eliminate.

If the policy isn't actively harming industry (and beyond optics it may not really be doing that much direct harm), it may seem like poor risk/reward to change it.

This isn't a normative argument.