It might be normal for that particular school, but I can assure you that anyone who is at all serious about a professional career in the States will start with an FAA Class One medical just to get that Student Pilot's license, as I did. Getting a Class One, not a Class Three " ... is the normal case for this type of flight training .... "
You miss the point. He wasn't doing flight training to work in the US, he had no chance to work there to begin with (no citizenship, no greencard), and he was, as many europeans do, just doing some flight training in the US to lateron work in europe, not the US.
What you say is most probably true for someone training in the US to work there. It is not for europeans doing some of their training in the US to work in Europe. The FAA didn't pass the buck, it was not FAA training to begin with, the FAA does not know MPL training for starters (which by the way, is only completed at the end of the LIFUS phase, in this case on A320). And he held a european class 1 medical after all.
The europeans just take advantage of the low costs in the US compared to europe, same as a lot of their other companies do as well.