Originally Posted by
zondaracer
There are foreign pilots at my company who are flying on a student visa. They went to an aviation university and achieved their ratings and flight time as quickly as possible. While still working on their degree, they worked as a flight instructor. They achieved enough flight time to qualify for a restricted ATP prior to graduating. Once graduating, they have come to my airline with the F1 visa OPT program, and they stay up to the time limit on the OPT program. One pilot at my company that I know won the green card lottery.
That’s a pretty big gamble vs the OP just going through training in the EU and going right into an airline there.