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It's my understanding that all the countries in Europe where salaries for software engineers are high, have rather strict immigration policies.

1. Other EU citizens can basically move around freely, from poor paying countries (Eastern Europe) to good paying ones.

2. Even for non-EU citizens, it's way way easier to get a software job (the company can get a visa for you). There is no H1B style cap. If you get an offer, you get the visa & job. True, for the first few years the visa might be tied to the job, but this just means that you need to have a new offer before leaving the previous job.

Salaries are not high in Europe compared to the US.

> salaries are still very high

Much less so than in the US, though. To be honest I think that's more an effect of different cultural values ("novelty" and "bootstrapping" here are not as celebrated as in the US), but there is definitely a difference.