"I honestly don't know if the border patrol even checks all of this stuff."

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".