> I see this in a friend of mine. He's a young PhD Machine Learning Researcher with top credentials (Ivy League, top publications, won awards in his field).

There are top-shelf jobs for your friend in Europe. E.g. Google's got large offices in London and Zurich and a quick search shows some possible fits for a PhD in ML. I know from friends that Amazon has a large office in Berlin focused on machine learning research and applications. Microsoft appears to be hiring ML scientists in München.