Monday, August 20, 2007
PM approves visa exemption for overseas Vietnamese
Supplied by BBC Worldwide Monitoring
August 19, 2007 Sunday
Vietnamese PM approves visa exemption for overseas Vietnamese
LENGTH: 361 words
Text of report in English by Vietnamese news agency VNA website
[VNA Report: "Visa Exemption for Overseas Vietnamese To Go Ahead"]
[Text disseminated as received without OSC editorial intervention]
Hanoi (VNA) -Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung on August 17 gave the nod to
a new regulation that will grant visa exemptions to Overseas Vietnamese
from September 1.
Ethnically Vietnamese people that hold foreign passports and foreign
nationals who are their husbands, wives and children will benefit from
the new policy.
A certificate must be obtained by the passport holders for the exemption
to be utilised. The certificate will be valid for five years. Overseas
Vietnamese will be granted a maximum of 90-day length of stay with
extensions available inside the country.
In order to be granted visa exemption certificates at Vietnamese
representative offices abroad, overseas Vietnamese need to submit one of
three following documents: a document that proves they are ethnically
Vietnamese; a guarantee by overseas Vietnamese associations based in the
country where they are residents of or by a Vietnamese citizen; and a
document by authorised foreign agencies certifying that they are
ethnically Vietnamese.
Husbands, wives and children of Vietnamese people living abroad will
also need to submit documents that prove their relationship to the
Vietnamese member of their immediate family.
Expecting a rush on representative offices abroad, the Committee for
Overseas Vietnamese has sent 200,000 visa exemption certificates to
Vietnamese embassies overseas.
The move to exempt visas for overseas Vietnamese is part of the
Government's efforts to speed up the implementation of the Politburo's
Resolution No 36 on tasks relating to overseas Vietnamese. The visas
exemption policy was announced by President Nguyen Minh Triet during his
visit to the US on June this year.
According to the Committee for Overseas Vietnamese, there are currently
close to three million overseas Vietnamese who have mostly settled in
the US, France, Australia and Canada. Around 500,000 overseas Vietnamese
return to Vietnam each year.-Enditem
Source: VNA news agency website, Hanoi, in English 19 Aug 07
