If you follow my stuff you are likely very aware of the trials and tribulations that people go through over here in Vietnam, Thailand, as well any other country where expats tend to gravitate to. All of the world's poorer countries have a sort of love/hate relationship with their long-term foreign inhabitants in that they likely enjoy the amount of relative affluence that our incomes bring to their society, but they can't simply allow the floodgates to open lest they price out their own population. It's probably a tricky game running Immigration because you want to let enough people in to boost the economy, but you don't want to open it too much and end up hurting the common man because, and I promise this is the truth and not a brag, the foreigners that live here are dramatically more wealthy than the average Vietnamese person.
That's just the way it is around the world and at least in Vietnam, they make it possible for foreigners to live here full-time, but they don't exactly make it super easy.
I got tired of jumping through the hoops so I went down the rather expensive road of getting an investment visa and made it all the way through the probationary period of 3 months and as of today, I now have my 1-year multiple entry visa which basically means that I never have to leave the country again unless I want to. Which is good, I guess.
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I don't know what your impression of what living in Vietnam is and maybe at some point I'll get to the ever-changing pros and cons of deciding to set up shop here and live. There's plenty of both, that is for sure. But one of the major obstacles that people are going to have when attempting to live here is getting a long term visa as there are not a ton of options available. People can do never-ending visa runs which seem to always be approved, but this will incorporate leaving the country on a bus or plane once every 45 to 90 days and then coming straight back in. This is an option available to me as well but because I have a doggo, I didn't want to run the risk of getting trapped outside of the country because the rules changed and I was unaware of them.
That is simply not a chance I am willing to take with my little fluff-ball and this is the primary reason why I went this route.
I won't write again about what it takes to get an investment visa but if you are interested you can dig back into my past posts and find it, it's in there. Let's just say that you will need to have at least 20,000 USD at your disposal and if you do, then you can worry about the other steps. That's enough about that for now.
Once you have the visa you are basically home free and depending on the sort of investment you made you are now either going to get kickbacks from the company if it was a high-risk investment, or you are going to have to share the tax-burden of the company if the investment is low-risk. Just like any investment, the higher the risk the greater the potential rewards. Since I was looking for a sure thing I went with a guaranteed "no loss" investment where I cannot lose my money... Therefore I will be sharing the tax burden of the company to the tune of around $30 a month. This is "grandfathered" into my contract and cannot change. In my mind it is a small price to pay considering that with the high-risk investments your money could be completely forfeit if the idea doesn't pan out (and a lot of ideas don't pan out!) and the only reason why I was investing in the first place was so that I wouldn't have to do visa runs or face needing to quickly get my dog and I out of Vietnam.
I justify this tax burden expense that comes monthly by comparing it to what it would cost me to go on visa runs every 90 days and it costs about the same once we factor in agent fees and visa fees as well as flight costs. Plus, you need to consider what your time and peace of mind are worth to you. I know that there is very little in this world that I enjoy LESS than traveling internationally, so for me, it was an easy choice.
Another benefit of the investment visa long with the 1-year visa is that I can come and go as I please without worrying about the visa being negated. This is something that others need to worry about because most of the shorter term visas (such as 45 and 90 days ones) are single entry, meaning that if you leave before the duration of the visa is finished you lose all the extra days. My visa begins right now and expires 1 year from now regardless of how many times I go in and out of the country. I don't do a great deal of pleasure travel internationally, but it is nice to know that is an option now especially since I haven't seen my parents since pre-Covid and a big part of that happening was because I was afraid of not being allowed back into the country.
I guess you could say that I am really happy that this process is finished and now I don't have to worry about anything for another 12 months. This isn't an option in all countries and even though it does take a relatively large nest egg to make it happen, trust me when I say that other countries around here have far more stringent visa policies.
So now I guess I'll just take it easy and kind of rib my friends whenever they have to go on visa runs.