The problem with decoupling amnesty for illegals and high skilled immigration is that the administration doesn't care about high skilled immigration. Illegal immigrants, were they to become legal, will vote Dem. Thus Dems favor it, Reps oppose it. High skilled immigrants don't show a large bias, neither party gets a political advantage from high skilled immigration, so it goes nowhere.

However, don't think that work authorization will stop innovation from fleeing the country. I'm a US Citizen, and I'm leaving the US to start a business in India in few weeks. My partners are both Indians with a green card.

It would be preferable for us to start our business in the US. We'd love to hire unemployed low skill Americans to act as mechanical turks for us (we need quite a bit of AAI). Their cultural knowledge would certainly be superior to Indian college students (important, since the US is our target market). But Americans are simply too expensive - the business wouldn't be feasible at US minimum wage rates, let alone wages high enough to convince Americans to give up unemployment benefits and come back to work.