For those of us that want to continue to live in Vietnam we have a couple of choices: You can do visa runs endlessly every 45-90 days, you can get a job as a teacher for a work-permit, or you can get an investment visa.
There are a number of reasons to choose any of these options but the first two didn't work for me and I think this would be true for a lot of other people as well. Let me explain the ins and outs of each option.
Vietnam immigration is one of the more friendly and efficient ones that I have encountered anywhere in the world. They are certainly a lot nicer than Thailand Immigration is because for whatever reason the Thai officials seem to get a kick out of being as mean as possible to anyone that ends up in their queues. Perhaps it is because Vietnam has about 1/10 the amount of tourism as Thailand does. I can't be sure and don't want to make sweeping accusations about an entire culture.
As "nice" as Vietnam Immigration is, it doesn't mean that it isn't a pain in the ass. So for people that are doing visa runs every 45-90 days, they still have to spend an entire day moving from one country to another, endure the cost of the travel to do so, and then stand in line for a long period of time. Since I find airports to basically be the worst places in the world at this particular moment in time, I want to avoid them unless I am actually going somewhere. But that isn't the main reason why I stopped doing this option.
For whatever reasons, the United States is not on the list of visa-exempt countries and therefore any US citizen must apply for an Evisa before they will be allowed back into the country. It is very rare that people get denied this visa but it does happen from time to time and it seems to be completely arbitrary when they are rejected. To make matters even more dire, you won't find out about this rejection until you are already out of the country and unable to get back in. There is a very good reason why I am completely unwilling to take this chance and it is exhibited in the following picture.
That's a very old picture of Nadi's 2nd birthday and I plan on being in her life for all the rest of them. The thought of me being out of the country and unable to get back in while she is locked in my condo here in Vietnam is not a chance I am willing to take. Even though the chances of rejection are slim, I am not willing to take even a slim chance of being separated from her. So this option stopped working for me after they changed the rules earlier this year. Other nationalities that are denied evisas can still come into the country on a 30 or 45 day visa waiver but this option is not available to Americans.
No offense to the woman in this picture, but this 2nd option of teaching here to get a work permit is something that I did ages ago in Thailand and I will never do it again. For the kind of jobs that I am eligible for based on my work history and educational background, the best job I could hope for would be to be a professional babysitter/clown that it appears she is doing in the photo. That was some of the least rewarding work I have ever done in my life and I absolutely hated it. After around 5 years of doing that job off and on I decided that I would rather do almost anything else other than that job.
The jobs that foreigners can easily get in this country are the kind of jobs where the employers are well aware of the fact that you are in it for the work visa and very little else. This basically gives them permission to treat you like crap, lie to you about classroom conditions, not provide you with anything in the way of supplies, and if you kick up a fuss, you're out and your visa will be cancelled. NO THANKS!
Which brings us to the last option, which is a rather expensive one but once it is done you are good to go for as long as you desire to stay in the country.
The Investment Visa
There are going to be a lot of reasons why people don't go for this option and the main thing is that you have to have at least $20,000 of actual investment money. Now, there are ways that I have heard of where this investment can be faked by an agent but I have someone I know that is currently blacklisted from re-entering Vietnam for precisely this reason. It seems as though Vietnam is very willing to allow you to stay here just about as long as you want to provided you don't try to con the system. My friend attempted to bypass the actual investing part of the investment visa, got caught, got sort of deported in that he was told that when his visa expires that he will not be offered another one, and is currently sitting outside of Vietnam waiting to get back in. Basically, if you don't have the money, it is not wise to pursue this option.
There are other costs as well that are going to chase certain people away. The initial cost for the first year is quite expensive. Just the visa fees are going to be $800 for the first year but I will admit that this cost for me might be inflated because I had an agent do everything for me. I told the agent that I want to be involved in the process as little as possible and that may have cost me extra. Since it doesn't state on my visa anywhere how much the visa was, I can't say for sure how much it actually is. I have been told that the first year is more expensive by design, to weed out any "lookie-loos" and just have the serious people in the system.
If you do want to pursue this route it is important that you find a company or at least an industry that you actually believe in because the way it works is that the company you invest in is required by law to return your investment to you after a certain grace period that is determined by a contract between you and the company. This can vary but has limits. With the company I invested in they have 6 months to return the money to me in full and the only exception to this would be if the company is insolvent / bankrupt. Then well, things get a bit more complicated. I took precautions to ensure that this wouldn't happen to me and had a lawyer look at the company's financials and discovered that my addition to the assets of the company still only comprised 1/15th of their overall assets and 70% are held by the CEO of the company. I can't imagine anyone who would intentionally bankrupt a company they own 70% of just to steal 30% so I felt pretty safe in this.
Another thing to keep in mind is that it is an option of the company to charge a "membership fee" to offset their tax load. The one I got involved with charges $50 a month, which is still cheaper than going on visa runs and with none of the hassle. There are also dividend options available but at such a low investment of $20,000 or so, you are very unlikely to encounter this. Larger companies might be interested in dividend investors but they are going to require considerably more money than $20,000 to be invested.
The bottom line
If you want to stay in Vietnam indefinitely and have a, at least in theory, visa that never ends then this is a good option to pursue. The investment visa is really the only way to go without getting fake married (which believe it or not a lot of people do) or real married. I'm at the point now where all the paperwork is done, the visa fees are paid for the first 15 months, and now I have a "homebase" of sorts. This option isn't going to be for everyone, but it is a way to be able to stay in one of the cheapest safe countries in the world. It wasn't a decision I took lightly, but I was actually quite pleased at how smooth the entire process was. I have only ever had to leave my house once to make it happen and that was to open a bank account that is required to get involved in the first place.
Which reminds me: I still haven't picked up my ATM card for that account... haha, maybe I'll go and do that today.