Mass Immigration "raids" happening all over Da Nang now

Don't get alarmed if you are someone that has a legal visa and is just living your life here. Nothing has changed as far as that is concerned and nobody is trying to change that. These recent raids have not had a press conference about them because Vietnam is not California and the government here doesn't feel the need to provide an explanation to the public for what they do. If they want to do something they do it and if the press gets too "asky" they will simply be ignored.

Don't forget that despite how friendly they are to people that are here and how their happiness index is still really high, this is still a Communist country that whose government is shrouded in secrecy.

But this isn't a political post at all so I'll leave that alone. I'm just talking about how in the past few weeks almost all neighborhoods with apartments that cater primarily to expat residents have had some large groups of green-uniformed visitors in the lobby in the past few weeks.

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This picture is unrelated to the raids. One way to definitely get yourself into unnecessary trouble would be to take an unauthorized photo of police in Vietnam. it never once occurred to me to try to take a picture of them doing their job that day.

I was returning home from shopping for groceries a few days back and there was a half dozen green-clad officers in the lobby of my apartment. Because I know that I have done nothing wrong in the years I have lived here, I approached them like I always would. Although they didn't exactly light up with smiles when I entered the lobby, they were not rude to me nor did they stop me from going to the elevator. I did notice the owner of my building frantically going through paperwork at the desk though and she in a kind of nervous way asked me to go get my passport so she could get a photo of my visa.

It was a strange situation for me because at that particular moment in time my passport was actually with my agent and I didn't have it. I'm not sure if the officers though I was making that up but my landlord, the only person in the room that spoke English, kind of sighed and said "oh no" and then told me to please (again, nobody was being mean) get his phone number for her to turn over to the officers. I of course did so and a few minutes later the one police officer, who was apparently in charge, gave me a smile and then immediately turned back to his piles of paper on the table next to the sofas.

Nothing to worry about for me. Nothing to worry about for anyone that has a legal visa and is in the country legally.

Now to some, this might seem like a scary situation but I am actually very much in favor of what these guys are doing. Recently, some news articles and social media postings have featured some foreigners that are behaving badly and doing criminal things. In almost all of these situations it was also highlighted that the perpetrators also were not on legal visas or had overstayed a legal visa by a long period of time.

This isn't to say that all people with expired visas are going to rob a jewelry story like that one American, or brandish a firearm at a pub like this one English guy did, but you cannot ignore the fact that both of these people had one thing in common: A general lack of respect for the law.

So while I can only speculate, I think that the Immigration officials are going around and weeding out any people who do not have a visa and rounding them up for questioning. This doesn't necessarily mean that anything bad is going to happen to them. I know 2 people that during Covid overstayed their visas by more than a YEAR and once they explained their situation and paid a fine, they were given the chance to sort out their visa legally and then were immediately allowed back into the country.

The kind of person that would rob a jewelry store or get into a physical fight with a taxi driver is a lot more likely to not concern themselves with such arduous things like getting their visa renewed ever 45-90 days.

When I spoke to other people that I know it turns out that their street was "raided" as well in recent weeks and the police seem to be doing a sweep of the entire area.

This is a good thing in my mind. Those of us that live here peacefully and legally absolutely hate it when some other foreigner ends up in the news abusing the Vietnamese hospitality because we enjoy being able to live here. It would be a real shame and a real pain for all of us if the few bad apples resulted in the government changing the rules and making it more difficult or impossible for us to live here. These sorts of sweeping changes to Immigration policy have already made long-term living in Thailand very difficult, and we would prefer to not have that happen here as well.

So I applaud the efforts of the police in doing this. Get the bad-un's out of here so that the rest of us can carry on with our lives in a happy manner.

Just one really important thing to note about Vietnam is that the attitude that a lot of people seem to have in the west about being able to bully or attempt to intimidate police officers? Well that doesn't fly here at all. If a police officer here instructs you to do something, be it a request to see your passport or direction of traffic, you better do it. They don't muck about here and disregarding them is a fantastic method of ensuring that a large mob of them are going to descend upon you.

The police are respected here, not feared. Despite their really serious looking uniforms and serious demeanor, they are not here to harass or inconvenience anyone. They protect and serve and this latest move to weed out undesirables is something I completely support.