In my experience it's trivial to get a TN1 visa if you are Canadian. It is tied to a specific employer, but an employer could just be an LLC set up by your friends. There is a similar visa for Australians now, the E-3.
- employees
- an office
- revenue or funding
I've got my (successful) application right in front of me, and it has proof of all 3 of those things. Also they have to pay you the "market rate" for an engineer (presumably that's the category you would be in), and you have to have a degree in order to prove that you fit in that category.
On the other hand, I know loads of people who go from Europe, Japan and Australia to California, NYC and Hawaii simply to hang out for 3 months at a time. These are people who have no college degree or any useful skills at all. They are here to surf, snowboard, or loaf around new york. Getting into the country is not a huge problem. The threads on this topic often have a tone of excessive worrying about visas. You can easily show up in the country and hang out for a while.
In my experience they do. I'm a Canuck who was working in Dubai, got a job in Vegas, applied for and received a TN Visa from the US Embassy in Abu Dhabi (which was a cool document bonded onto one of my passport pages). I transitted through the Vancouver airport on my way to LV. There, US Customs took one look at my TN-1, drew a line through it, noted "Cancelled without Prejudice" and denied me entry to the US to work. When I asked why the response I received was, and I quote, "Abu Dhabi don't know shit".
The bastards don't deserve us if that is how they intent to treat us.