At a dialogue about administrative procedureson November 4, Maj. Gen. Pham Dang Khoa, Director of the MPS’s ImmigrationDepartment, said administrative reforms in immigration management have beencarried out in a proactive, strong, and serious manner to create favourableconditions for all Vietnamese citizens to exit from and enter the country, andfor foreigners to come to Vietnam for tourism, investment, and tradingpurposes.
Besides, the reforms are also meantto improve the state management of exit and entry, and opportunely detect andfight law violations so as to help safeguard national security, he noted.
Compared to many other countries,Vietnam’s visa procedures are simple and quick, and can be handled in differentforms to meet foreigners’ demand, the official went on.
So far, Vietnam has expanded e-visagranting to citizens in 80 countries and territories. It has also unilaterallyexempted visa for citizens of 13 countries, and carried out bilateral exemptionfor those in 12 other countries.
The reception and settlement of exitand entry procedures have continued to be reformed and decentralised,especially the application of online public services at Level 4 - the highestlevel - in 2022 under the Prime Minister and MPS Minister’s direction.
Khoa added the Immigration Department will press on with IT application in visagranting for foreigners to attract more foreign investors and tourists toVietnam.
With regard to the new passport version, the official noted that the MPS hasgranted the new passport since July 1. However, from July 27, some Europeancountries decided to suspend granting visa onto the new passport version asinformation about the “place of birth” is absent. This issue has affectedVietnamese citizens’ entry into the Schengen countries.
At the request of the NationalAssembly Standing Committee, the Government ordered the MPS and Vietnam’soverseas representative bodies to include the “place of birth” in passports’appendixes, which has been accepted by those countries.
To ensure rights and legitimate interests of Vietnamese citizens, theImmigration Department has proposed authorities supplement the birthplaceinformation to exit and entry papers of Vietnamese citizens, according toKhoa./.