If you run a fast food outlet, a takeaway, a coffee shop or a limited service pizza restaurant, you cannot nominate a chef in the Core Skills stream. That is not a judgement call by a case officer. It is written into the occupation list itself.
The venue test
Chef sits on the Core Skills Occupation List at ANZSCO code 351311. But the list attaches two circumstances to that occupation, and if either applies to the position, the occupation does not apply to your nominee at all.
The two circumstances are:
- the position is involved in mass production in a factory setting
- the position is in a limited service restaurant
A limited service restaurant is defined in the instrument, and the definition is wider than most operators expect. It includes a fast food or takeaway food service, a fast casual restaurant, a drinking establishment that offers only a limited food service, a limited service cafe including a coffee shop or mall cafe, and a limited service pizza restaurant.
So the question is not whether you employ someone who cooks. It is whether the position you are nominating sits in a venue of that kind. A full service restaurant, a hotel kitchen or a function venue is a different position from a counter-service cafe, even when the cooking looks similar.
Cook, at ANZSCO 351411, carries the same two circumstances.
Source: Migration (Specification of Occupations—Subclass 482 Visa) Instrument 2024 (LIN 24/089), sections 4, 6 and 7, Compilation No. 3, compilation date 7 November 2025, F2025C01064. Made under subregulation 2.72(9) of the Migration Regulations 1994.
Advertising: two ads, four weeks, four months
Labour market testing is the second thing that decides the nomination, and it is the one that cannot be fixed afterwards. If the advertising was not done properly, the nomination waits until it has been.
What the instrument requires:
- the position advertised in Australia, in English
- at least two advertisements, each commissioned or authorised by you as the approved sponsor
- placed on a recruitment website with national reach in Australia, print media with national reach, radio with national reach, or your own website if you are an accredited sponsor
- each advertisement showing the title or a description of the position and the skills or experience required
- the salary shown in the advertisement if the intended annual earnings for the position are below AUD 96,400
- applications or expressions of interest accepted for at least four weeks from first publication
- all of it done within the four months ending on the day the nomination is lodged
Read those last two together, because that is where the timing goes wrong. The advertising has to run long enough to give four weeks of open applications, and it has to sit inside a four-month window that closes on the day you lodge. Start advertising too early and the window has passed. Lodge too soon and the four weeks are not complete.
Some occupations and positions are exempt from advertising and instead need a written submission explaining why a suitably qualified Australian is not readily available. Whether that applies to a particular chef position is something to check before you place an advertisement, not after.
Source: Migration (LIN 18/036: Period, manner and evidence of labour market testing) Instrument 2018, sections 6 to 9, Compilation No. 5, compilation date 7 December 2024, F2024C01268. Made under section 140GBA of the Migration Act 1958.
Your chef may need a trade skills assessment
For chef and for cook, a skills assessment through Trades Recognition Australia is required where the applicant holds a passport issued by Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Fiji, Hong Kong, India, Macau, Nepal, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, South Africa, Thailand, Vietnam or Zimbabwe, and is not an exempt applicant for the occupation.
That covers a large share of the candidates a Perth kitchen actually recruits. The assessment takes time, and it is worth starting before the rest of the paperwork rather than alongside it.
Source: Migration (IMMI 18/039: Mandatory Skills Assessment—Subclass 482 Visa) Instrument 2018, compilation F2025C00062, in force. Made under subregulation 2.26B(1) and paragraph 1240(3)(g) of Schedule 1 to the Migration Regulations 1994.
What you are signing up to
Sponsorship is three separate approvals, not one application. You are approved as a work sponsor under section 140E of the Migration Act 1958. The position is approved as a nomination under section 140GB. Then the chef applies for the visa. Each stage is decided on its own criteria.
Once you are an approved sponsor, Division 2.19 of the Migration Regulations 1994 imposes ongoing obligations that run for as long as the sponsorship does. They include cooperating with inspectors, ensuring equivalent terms and conditions of employment, keeping records, giving the Department information when certain events occur, ensuring the person works in the nominated occupation, and not recovering or transferring certain costs so that somebody else pays them.
That last one catches people. The sponsorship and nomination charges are yours, and passing them to the chef is a breach rather than an arrangement.
Failing an obligation is not a paperwork matter. The Act provides for sanctions under section 140K, cancellation of your approval or a bar on sponsoring under section 140M, and a civil penalty under section 140Q.
None of that is a reason to avoid sponsoring. It is a reason to know what the obligations are before you are bound by them, which is most of what we do on the employer side.
Sources: Migration Act 1958, sections 140E, 140GB, 140GBA, 140K, 140M and 140Q, compilation C2026C00232, 4 June 2026. Migration Regulations 1994, Division 2.19, regulations 2.77 to 2.87C, compilation F2026C00667, 1 July 2026.
What it costs, and the salary you have to pay
There is a minimum salary level for the nomination, and the position also has to be paid at the annual market salary rate — what an Australian citizen or permanent resident earns, or would earn, doing equivalent work full-time for a year in the same workplace at the same location.
We do not publish the threshold figure here on purpose. It is indexed each year under regulation 5.42A of the Migration Regulations 1994, and a number printed on a website is wrong the moment it moves. We give you the figure that applies on the day, along with the current application charges and the levy, at the first call.
Source for the annual market salary rate definition: Migration Regulations 1994, regulation 1.03, compilation F2026C00667, 1 July 2026.
What we would ask you first
- What kind of venue is it, and what does the service look like at the pass?
- Is the chef already in Australia, and on what visa, with what conditions?
- Have you advertised the role yet, and where, and when did applications open and close?
- What passport does the chef hold?
- Is the business trading, and are the accounts in order?
The answers to those five decide whether this is straightforward or whether there is something to solve first. That conversation costs nothing and saves the advertising being done twice.
Talk to us
Australian Migration Co is a Perth practice. Adam (Gurkan) Kocoglu is a Registered Migration Agent, MARN 2418576, and takes employer sponsorship matters across Western Australia.
Book a consultation or read more about employer sponsored visas.
We cannot tell you what a decision will be, and nobody who is registered will. We can tell you what the criteria are, what your position has to satisfy, and where the risk sits before you spend money on it.
Information current at 10 September 2026. Migration law changes, and the figures and lists referred to on this page are amended from time to time. This page is general information, not immigration assistance for your matter.