Restaurant manager wins residence appeal at the tribunal

[Applicant A] is a Japanese restaurant manager at a small, family-owned Japanese restaurant in Arrowtown. A previous representative lodged her skilled migrant residence application, which also included her husband. Immigration New Zealand interviewed her and the owner by phone, then declined the application, saying her role did not closely enough match the official job description for a restaurant manager. Without the points for skilled work, the application could not succeed. We were brought in to take the case to the tribunal.

We took the case to the Immigration and Protection Tribunal and challenged the decision on two levels. On process, we showed how the interview was conducted unfairly and how the applicant was never given the chance to fix the record. On the merits, we went through the official restaurant manager tasks one by one and showed, using past tribunal decisions, that a manager does not need the final say over menus, budgets or hiring to be doing the job. Helping plan the menu with the chef, buying and pricing food to a budget, and choosing and training staff is enough.

The tribunal agreed the immigration decision was not correct, cancelled it, and sent the application back to immigration to be decided again, fairly, by a new officer. Winning the appeal does not guarantee the visa, but it means the application gets a fresh and proper assessment. Later, the application was allocated to a new immigration officer who conducted new interviews with the employer and the applicant, but ultimately the application was approved.

A refusal that says your job does not closely enough match the official job description can often be challenged, both on the legal test and on how the decision was reached, and the two arguments support each other. Being a restaurant manager does not require the final say over the menu, the budget or who gets hired, so the appeal succeeded by showing real involvement in planning the menu with the chef, buying and pricing food to a budget, and choosing and training staff. And where an officer records your interview answers incorrectly, asking for the interview record and showing the difference can be decisive, because you cannot fix information you have never been allowed to see.