Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: This new scoring scheme is an own goal

A week ago exactly, my beloved mother, Jena, was buried, lowered into the land of the country she came to more than three decades ago, an exile from Uganda.

What a loyal old immigrant she was; what steaming arguments we had over my perpetual confrontations with this state. "They will throw us out of here too if you don't keep quiet. Thank this country, see how much it has given to people who come here with nothing, so many opportunities."

"So now what do you say, Jena?" I want to ask her as this government plans to systematise our immigration policy through a points system which privileges the skilled and prosperous, leaving the wretched of the earth to sink further into oblivion or use unlawful methods which kill or confine workers to perilous twilight jobs where their lives and rights count for nothing.

In this new British caste system, the Brahmins would be some of the big gangsters who make millions exporting desperate humans to the wealthy world, the cabals which strip old Soviet bloc countries of their national assets, the dodgiest business dealers on the planet.

Some are here already, swaggering and laying claim to this island, because they are rich. In the B+ list of the invited are health and education professionals, technologists, IT wizards, engineers, extraordinary sportspeople and cultural icons. Persecuted writers and painters are embraced, but not desperate farmers or miners. Oh, and all whites from South Africa, Zimbabwe, New Zealand, Australia are always, always welcome. The new untouchables, the uninvited, are most of the deprived and despairing individuals from the developing world who are determined to break the cycle of indigence.

My RSC show, Extravagant Strangers, on later this month, tells the story of these adventures, our big dreams. New Labour wants to Make Poverty History by keeping out the poor and their aspirations, Hallelujah.

A fair and smart immigration strategy - and we must have one - should give incomers the chance to become. When they succeed, both the old and new country share the harvest. Globally, $167bn (£97bn) a year flows back to poor families and regions, sent by enterprising immigrants. New Labour's proposals are an organised raid of those who already are highly skilled folk trained in hard-pressed countries and successful entrepreneurs. Leave aside the bleeding-heart remonstrations, this new scoring scheme will rebound on our national interests.

Think about it. Under this system, we would get many more tax avoidance crooks (perhaps defended by international lawyers) but not Benjamin Zephaniah, one of our most innovative wordsmiths, who would be rejected as a dark and unruly Rastaman, with no previous qualifications or skills or cash - no good to the economy. We might never have had the pleasure of Michael Portillo's ubiquitous charm - his parents would, I reckon, have found it hard to pass the test.

Dr Chai Patel, the chief executive of the group that owns the Priory Clinic, would not (avowedly selflessly) have injected £1.5m into the New Labour election fund. ('Tis a loan, he says.) His small-shopkeeper father would not have been able to garner the points for entry. Imagine that. These new regulations sever the hands that feed the avaricious Labour Government. That may make them think again if nothing else does.

Our taxes pay for this creepy lecturer

The Leeds University lecturer Frank Ellis claims he knows - because he is a lecturer and learned - that white people are genetically superior to black people. He quotes discredited studies, and approves of one which concludes that the IQ of sub-Saharans is "close to or within the range of mental retardation".

Prissy liberals, as ever, have rushed out to defend his freedom of speech, the same people who roll over when Zionist influence stops any criticism of Israel's illegal policies. What if he had said Jewish power controls the world? Or if a Muslim lecturer publicly claimed that research proved that white girls are naturally more promiscuous than Asian women? They would be gone, thrown to the dogs.

Black and Asian students on his courses must feel demeaned, enraged, misrepresented, hurt, and even afraid. How can they interact with him?

Our taxes pay for this creep. Sack him I say, and fast. Let him go and find his true vocation - sharpening the teeth of the BNP, which he believes has gone too soft for his liking.

* Women have been struggling with the demands of work and home longer than I care to remember. We have also been complaining to, and about, our partners for as long - how men never get back early enough from work or take time off for that suddenly spotty or spluttering child.

Poor chaps, having to mollify our gripes and torn between parental responsibilities and workplace expectations where real men cannot be good fathers. Most employers, as we know, haven't the wit or the will to accommodate involved fathers.

A new TUC report on flexible working reveals the frustration of these men. Two hundred thousand of them simply give up work to be with the children.

This is the start of a social revolution. New men need us women to support, not nag, them as they now battle for the rights we can take for granted.

y.alibhai-brown@independent.co.uk