I admit that I have been curious about this for quite some time because as an American, my ability to obtain tourist visas are more limited than other nationalities. Recently a couple of friends of mine went through the increasingly and unnecessarily complicated process of going on a visa run only to get told days later that their E-visa was denied with no reason given as to why. For many nationalities, most of the big nation's ones anyway, this is only a minor setback because they are entitled to a 45-day visa exemption on arrival regardless of how many times they have done this previously.
For Americans though, we are NOT entitled to the 45-day visa at all, we must apply for visas ahead of time and get them approved before we ever fly to Vietnam or come in by road, so an American, if they are denied an E-visa, they don't have any choice but to keep applying over and over until for whatever reason it ends up getting approved. I have a friend that has been in Thailand for months now and applies over and over again and has even gotten a lawyer involved to try to find out why he is being denied because nobody will really tell him anything. I suppose a government isn't actually obligated to give you a reason why they are denying you entrance but I don't see how he can possibly comply with rules that he isn't even aware of.
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The E-visa thing was a wonderful expansion of the visa process when it first launched because it meant that you could be approved for another visa while you currently had one. You could time your flight or your land road crossing based on this day. I don't know what happened in the 1 and a half years that the E-visa has existed but all of a sudden they stopped allowing people that are currently in the country to apply for another visa until they are out of the country. It was never like this before.
For people like me, being able to apply for another visa was a wonderful step because we now had assurance that we were going to be let back in. Now, going on one of these visa runs can be a very stressful and expensive ordeal because many people have booked return, same-day flights only to have their Evisa denied while they were waiting in the airport. Then they have to scramble to re-apply as well as find a hotel and accept their fate of simply playing the "waiting game."
There is an alternative though and it is one that I am pursuing. Unfortunately for most people the cost will be prohibitive. In order to qualify for the investment visa you have to put $20,000 into a company and it has to be a real company. Preferably it would be in a company that you have faith is actually going to grow and not become insolvent.
The reason why you believing in the company is so important is because the company is required to return your $20,000 to you should you decide to exit the company, but they will not be required to do so if the company goes bankrupt and becomes insolvent. So there is a real risk there. I've done pretty well with managing my finances over the years but I didn't do so well that I am not going to be bothered by the loss of $20,000.
Once you have made the decision to put money into a business, you need to establish a bank account in your own name in Vietnam. This is a relatively straight-forward process and the only problem is going to be finding a bank that has tellers or associates that speak English. Because of this potential problem, it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to get an agent involved. I hired an agent to help me open the bank account and it took about 30 minutes with me doing basically nothing other than signing some documents that they put in front of me. I only had to pay the agent a couple hundred thousand VND to do this for me and this is less than $10. I think you have to consider what you consider your time to be worth because I saw a couple of other foreigners in the bank while I was there and they just looked confused and upset. I barely even had to speak so yeah, to me it was worth the $10.
Once you have the account you have to move US$20,000 over and then you begin the process of doing the paperwork to make you an investor and most of the time they also make you a silent partner and member of the board. This board almost always doesn't actually exist and it is just a formality and requirement of the paperwork.
In the coming 1.5 months I will be going through all of these steps and can detail every aspect of them. The agent who is facilitating this process for me has assured me that it will work and that I don't have anything to worry about. I believe the agent not because I know much about him, but because he stands to gain nothing by lying to me. He makes no money if the visa isn't approved and the transfer of money is carefully tracked by all people involved so there is no reason for him to lie. He makes less money and does more work if the process does encounter hiccups so I believe him when he say that this is a perfectly legitimate and, provided you have the money, easy process to get done.
At the moment we are just in the money transferring process, next week we begin the paperwork. I will keep everyone updated as to how this process evolves so if anyone else out there is interested, they can follow in my footsteps.