You know the old saying "if it isn't broken, don't try to fix it?" Well apparently Vietnamese Immigration doesn't know about this statement because in the past 2 years or so they have been constantly fiddling with visa policies while also kind of complaining about how they aren't getting the amount of tourist that they want or need. It doesn't make a great deal of sense to me or anyone else but they have once again changed the 3-month tourist visa policy and this is going to irritate a lot of people who currently live here long-term on tourism visas.
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A common and rather snotty response that some people have to people like me complaining about them fiddling with visa regulations is something along the lines of "you aren't supposed to be living somewhere on a tourist visa!" Ok, that is technically true, but the Vietnamese authorities are extremely aware of the fact that tens of thousands of people here use said visa for precisely that and there are no other options for longer term visas like there would be in other countries. We aren't pulling a fast one on them, they know exactly where we are and are very aware of the fact that we are living here for years at a time and simply renewing the tourist visa over and over again. Not that long ago they had 1-year tourist visas for French and American people, and no one really needs a one-year tourist visa for any country. Let's just say that Vietnam truly is very aware that people are using the tourist visa to live here semi-permanently.
So here is the irritating change that took place some time in early January: In order to get issued a new E-visa, you now must reside outside of the country for at least a few days before they will issue it to you. For a lot of people this wouldn't be a very big deal and they would simply use this time to go on some sort of tourist something or other in a nearby country. The reason why it is a very big problem for a lot of other folks though is that while it is rare, sometimes these visas are arbitrarily denied with no reason given as to why that is the case. Some of us have been here so long that we own things here and a lot of friends of mine have pets here as well. If we go out of the country under the pretense that we are going to be allowed back in after just a few days and the answer ends up being no, this is a very big problem especially for people like myself that come from a country that is not entitled to a visa on arrival for 30 days.
There was no reason given as to why they have implemented this new policy but this is nothing new. Vietnam treats almost all policy changes as a "need to know" sort of thing and they basically feel as though nobody actually NEEDS to know.
I don't know if this policy is going to be long-standing but here is the major issue I have with it, inconvenience for me and tens of thousands of other people aside: The government is always pushing for increases in tourism and the expansion of the existing tourism infrastructure is constantly expanding in areas such as my own. But at the same time they are actively discouraging people who want to stay and spend money in precisely these spots from being able or willing to do so. It's kind of like a department store that is constantly spending money on promoting big sales but on the day of the sale they only let 50% of the potential customers actually enter the store.
For digital nomads, this country is one of the hot spots for the entire world because of ease of life, affordability, and the fact that visas are (or were) really easy to continually acquire. This situation of not being able to even digitally apply for the visa until you are physically out of the country is going to frustrate a bunch of people into simply giving up on this notion and moving to somewhere else or as many of my DN friends have already planned on doing, they are going to jump back and forth from here and Thailand every 3 months.
So why would a country that is basically begging the world to come and spend money here be actively discouraging people from doing precisely that? It doesn't make any sense to me but then again, very little of what politicians and governments do the world over makes sense to me.
Hopefully, someone high up will look at this and think "WTF are we doing this for?" and reverse it because it was fine the way it was before. I can't imagine why they would change it. I foresee a lot of people ending up trapped out of the country and simply getting fed up with the system and ending up finding somewhere else to live. Then and perhaps only then will Vietnam Immigration realize that making the system more complicated for people maybe wasn't the best idea.
As it stands now I am legally able to stay until mid May, but I am going to plan for the worst and be prepared to move away from here entirely if this policy is still in place come that time. I want to spend my earnings inside your country. Why would you have a problem with that?