Imagine you pass a mutable string to a function but don't expect it to be changed. Then what if the function changes that string? In C++, for instance, you could simply do call-by-value (difference between std::string and std::string& parameter), but in C# it's all about references so if you passed mutable strings around every function could change it and trigger unexpected side effects.
This is just one of various reasons. Performance is another one (interned strings, for example).
