A potential work around is to work for one of the U.S. airlines that hires foreign pilots and has global home basing. National and Western Global both fit that bill (not the greatest, I know, but pay is FAR better than EU airlines). Then spend your off days in the States. While you cannot officially live in the States, you will be away for work enough that you will not run afoul of the time limits associated with the EU visa waiver limitations. I know several American pilots who use this work around the other way too, "living" in Europe while working for a U.S. airline, and just being gone from the EU enough that they never exceed the time limits on the visa waiver. I also know of a few guys who went to work for these U.S. airlines, but on the foreign contract and staying based overseas, but then applied for a green card. I don't know how the rules work, but they did mention their lawyers had said that working for a U.S. airline, and having the ability to easily switch to a U.S. based contract, was viewed as a positive when applying for the green card. I know of one guy who did that, and as soon as he got the green card, applied to one of the U.S. legacy airlines and was hired pretty quickly.