I put the feelers out to several US regionals, incl. Skywest, Envoy etc. Mostly out of curiousity.
Every single one came back to me and said that they were currently not in a position to sponsor pilots.
It's curious, as the shortage over there is real, every regional is hiring, and most of them are having a lot of trouble filling their ground schools...but there you have it.
As far as converting a CASA license to FAA, it doesn't take 6-8 months. It takes 6-8 weeks to get your license confirmation done by the FAA. After that you need to make an appointment at an FAA field office, this needs to be done about 2 weeks in advance. Then you do your FAA CTP (which includes FAA ATP written) followed by flight test, which again takes about 2 weeks. So around 10-12 weeks (3 months) all up.