Ankur Sabharwal is the owner of immigration advisory Visa Matters. He is a licensed immigration adviser dealing with complex immigration matters.
OPINION: When is a migrant chef not a chef? When that chef is telling Immigration New Zealand they are a cook.
In the Government’s war on migrant chefs, immigration advisers are fighting back by telling chefs to apply for work visas as cooks.
For many migrant chefs, it’s the quickest way to be allowed to work in a New Zealand restaurant.
You may have read stories saying that Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay wouldn’t qualify for work visas to come to New Zealand as chefs – simply because they don’t hold a New Zealand Certificate in Cookery (Level 4) or equivalent.
Those stories are true.
Of the hundreds of possible occupations, ‘chef’ is the only one that requires a specific qualification when applying for an Accredited Employer Work Visa.
People working in other occupations can meet immigration requirements through qualifications, work experience, or professional registration in New Zealand.
Not chefs. They have to have a Level 4 cooking certificate. If their qualification is an overseas one which is not ‘recognised’, they’ll have to pay $445 to have it assessed by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority.
This ridiculous red tape has led immigration advisers to tell restaurant owners hard-pressed to find staff: What you are looking for isn’t a chef, it’s a cook!
What’s the difference between a cook and a chef, then?
When deciding what occupation an applicant will be working in, Immigration New Zealand (INZ) refers to a database called ANZSCO.
According to ANZSCO, a cook and a chef both prepare and cook food, but chefs also:
So, if your migrant chef won’t be doing those add-ons, they don’t have a Level 4 cooking certificate, but they do have years of relevant work experience they must be … a cook!
The restaurant owner advertises in Trade Me or Seek for an experienced cook, finds none, and eventually INZ approves an Accredited Employer Work Visa to an overseas chef, sorry, cook.
There are a couple of really stupid things about this workaround of chefs applying as cooks.
INZ used to turn down Work to Residence applications of people claiming to be chefs because INZ decided they were, in fact, cooks.
‘Chef’ was a position on the Long Term Skill Shortage List, leading to residence, but not ‘cook’ (this residence pathway was closed in October 2021).
Now immigration advisers are frantically running in the opposite direction, claiming that their clients won’t be doing the fancy stuff, they’ll actually just be cooking.
Stupidly, one of the reasons that the Government required a cooking certificate only for chefs was that “there was also a concern that migrant chefs might displace New Zealanders in less skilled positions,” INZ told me this week.
Does it make sense to you that the Government is only worried about ‘migrant chefs’ but not ‘migrant cooks’? Because it is approving migrant cooks without any cooking qualifications … and the Government’s rules allow it.
Oh, and, by the way, chefs are considered more high-skilled than cooks, according to the ANZSCO database of occupations. It’s just that the Government’s new ‘qualification-required’ rule tries to keep some chefs out, but makes it easier for lower-skilled cooks to be approved.
This is a big issue for restaurants which are struggling to find suitable staff. The Prime Minister is aware of it and has asked the Minister of Immigration to look into it.
I’ll leave the last word to Andrew Craig, Immigration Policy Manager at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE):
“The Minister of Immigration has asked MBIE to provide advice on whether the current policy settings are appropriate in the circumstances.”
DISCLAIMER: This article does not constitute immigration advice. Individuals need to seek personal advice from a New Zealand licensed immigration adviser or lawyer to assess their unique situation. Ankur can be contacted at info@visamatters.co.nz.
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