Winter Driving Me Nuts - Want Contract Somewhere Warm

Process for Canadian web designers to do work in America

[visca]

This year, winter is anything but pleasant up north. Any time now I will simply stop typing, drop my mouse, walk over to the oven, turn it on, curl up inside and wait until June. To prevent such a drastic measure, I'm trying to figure out how to get somewhere warm and do some web work to pay for it. This message isn't to seek offers, it is to better understand the process and possible resources that may be out there to assist me.

ISSUE
I am a Canadian web design and usability specialist with a solid portfolio of work to show for myself. My goal is to obtain short term (example 4 - 12 month) contracts for companies in the states.

QUESTION
What is the process you or others you know have taken to find such contracts and obtain visa permission? Have there been resources that have assisted in obtaining this goal? What is the success rate of finding work in the web design field? Is web design saturated with qualified workers already in the states?

The problems I foresee are that web design is something that can be done remotely in many cases (unlike for example the rollout of a new fleet of desktops for a company) therefore lowering the justification to fly someone in. And secondly, that the downturn in the web industry has dried up to all but a rare and highly sought after remaining handful of difficult to obtain positions.

This may have been covered in another thread, if so I appologize, I couldn't get any results back on my searches.

Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

[jeremy goodrich]

*punt* no ideas, perhaps somebody else has more experience along these lines...?

The site for immigration related q's in the stats is [ins.gov...] which is where I get most of my information on visas, etc.