When I was heavily into building my airplane - back in the mid 90's - I spent a lot of time at my hangar at Titusville, FL. I always had my handheld radio tuned to the tower frequency just to know what was going on.
Thinking back, there were a lot of Middle-Eastern students taking lessons back then. They could hardly speak English. The tower controller had to repeat everything for them.
We had even more students from Great Britain, two of whom I spoke with one day to ask them why they came all the way over here to learn to fly.
They told me that America was the last place on earth where people were free to fly. Oh, nominally they could still fly over in Europe, but the government had made it so regulated and so expensive that it was impossible. They have landing fees over there, so every time a student practices a landing (you have to do literally hundreds to get it right), it cost him $400 or so.
The Brits said they could come over here on an airline, spend two months in a nice hotel or condo, learn to fly, visit all the attractions, all for half what it cost just for the flying in England.
Regardless of the anti-freedom rabble here on FR, I will not let it go without a fight.
In Saudi Arabia, only members of the "royal" family are allowed to fly or own aircraft. I taught a couple of Saudi's to fly in the early '80s (engineering students along with me) who told me that this was the only place they could learn and fly. One guy bought an ultra-light and took it home with him; he told the Saudi Customs guys that all that canvas and aluminum tubing was for a porch awning! He flies it in secret over the Red Sea and keeps it hidden.
It's one thing to talk about how great it is that anyone with the cash can learn to fly in this country. I loved that these guys could do that (the guy with the ultra light still comes back to the U.S. just to rent a 150 and go around the pattern). But it's another thing to simply let anyone in to do it without vetting their background. Now that the genie is out of the bottle, it would be senseless not to do that.