I don’t know what your reaction was to the announcement by the British government of a new, points-based immigration system, but mine has developed over a period of days, like a particularly interesting coloured bruise.

The biggest, purplest, patch comes from the fact that I’m not actually sure I’ve ever known anyone in the UK who has a job paying more than £25,600. I certainly wouldn’t want to bet my life on knowing more than three or four of them.

Then there are various colours made up from “What counts as an official sponsor? Or an appropriate skill level?” to “What foreign-born person with a PhD is going to bother to try to gain entry to such an obviously xenophobic country?” and “You have read the level of English in Brexiteer comments, right?”

And then I contemplate my own arrival in a foreign country, aged 35, with no obvious skill set and a minimal grasp of the language. I got a job as a hotel cleaner – along with all the other immigrants – and spent the first couple of months in the job nodding vigorously, saying “Oui” and then copying the more experienced cleaners when the manager instructed me to clean such items as “les plinthes” (that’s the skirting boards, in case you too never encountered this particular term during your school French lessons).

By the time I’d lived in France for a year, I spoke the language fluently enough to get a job selling houses. By the time I’d done that for a year, I could speak it well enough to rock up in an obscure hamlet and engage the nearest paysan in a patois-ridden conversation about who might possibly have an empty house they’d like to sell.

And by the time I’d moved to another country and gone through the same process again, I realised I could set up as a freelance translator; a job in which I set my own working hours, refuse projects I don’t fancy the look of, and earn about three times what I’ve ever earned from a “real” job (and yes, rather more than the magic £25,600 a year).

Because, unless we spring like the other Cabinet members, fully formed from a public school education and several hundred years of wealthy ancestors, it sometimes takes us ordinary mortals a while to find our place as useful members of society. Occasionally, we even need to move from one country to another to do it. We may even – shock, horror! – have to become self-employed! But that still doesn’t make us unworthy of living in the UK.

Except by choice, of course.

You can find out for yourself whether you’d be eligible for immigration* in this fun game, made by Upstart Theatre.

Here’s my result:

*Answer: almost certainly not.