Moving to California for work..need some help!

Good points. Nay, excellent points. Yes, the absolute number one problem with the entire TN process is the arbitrary nature of the granting/denial. Even our lawyers (multiple ones!) who helped my wife and I prepare our applications could not give me 100% assurance we would be granted the visa, and we had all the necessary on-paper legal and technical requirements for ours! God Bless the CPB (and Canada Customs), but in all honesty the process needs to be taken out of their hands IMHO, and I had a most polite and helpful one (can't say the same for my wife's- he seemed to relish his tongue-in-cheek threat to deny the visa due to a misspelling of "January"- gave us both a heart attack).

Mny people faced with the arbitrary (many say capricious) nature of CBP, simply file I-129 with CIS, especailly for renewals. At least the 3-year duration has taken some of the steatm out of CBP hot-heads.