Hey Bafanguy
I'm one of those 1059. My (Canadian) company had a US division so they had a few of us convert our licenses so we could fly those N-reg a/c in the US as well. There are probably a bunch of us in that boat. Haven't met a single Canadian flying for a US company that does not have a green card, either by dual citizenship or marriage...
Pre 9/11, there were a few companies (Piedmont I think) who would sponsor the occasional Canadian UND graduate, but of course that ended when the twin towers went down - until now, perhaps!