When I moved to the US, Diners had a similar program and allowed me to get a cc in the US 6months before any bank would give me one. My Equifax info was useless in the US (though, things may have changed from 10yrs ago, wrt to how thy report your credit file in Canada when compared to the US).

As far as I can tell, the IRS will give an ITIN to anybody who asks. ITIN has the same format as SSN, and can be used in place of an SSN for credit purposes; however, using an ITIN this way will cause you big problems if you ever become a eligable to work in the US and get a SSN - the credit reporting systems cannot cope with the concept of a change of SSN.

When we first arrived in the US I was on H1 and my wife was on H4 visa - so I could get a SSN, but as H4 does not allow work, she could not. She got an ITIN (required by IRS for our joint tax return), but didn't use it for credit - as we had been warned about the ITIN=>SSN creditr issue. We know other immigrant wives who did use ITIN for credit - and basically had to "start over" when they got an SSN.

IME Amex is the best way to get a card with a decent limit in the US for new arrivals. I had been an Amex cardholder for ~5 years before we immigrated; it took just a quick call to get my amex account moved to the US - but note that they do not get the account history - so I had some worried calls from them when spending $3+/mo in the first few months. I faxed them a paystub, and paid my bills on time and they stopped calling after a couple of months. Note - this transferred my account and NOT my credit history - was told there was no way to do this.

Getting a mortgage right away without US credit history was very easy. For a big finacial transaction it's worth the financial institution doing a manual credit check with youir overseas finacial institutions. We closed on our home 2 weeks after we landed. It's possible that it's not so easy now, and expect to pay Jumbo rates - Fannie/Freddie won't touch such loans.