I have written quite a lot about this in the past but it is only because it irritates me that the notion of the "blacklist from entry" into Vietnam is something that is perpetuated on popular mainstream social media groups such as the obligatory "local expats" group that exists for everywhere in the world. It is a den of lies and of course people being very mean to one another just like any FB group but this particular lie is one that makes me angry because it gets people extremely worried about something that I can find absolutely zero evidence that it actually exists.
The threat is this: If you overstay on your visa beyond a certain non-stated period of time you will get put on a list that will disallow you from re-entering Vietnam for a certain period of time, normally the threat is multiple years. This is a very fearful thing for people like me that live and work online here in the digital nomad community because all of our possessions especially our electronics are still in Vietnam - so the threat of not even being allowed to come back in and pick them up is something that I think we rightfully take seriously.
I simply cannot find any reputable information to show that ANYONE has ever been truly blacklisted from re-entry into this country for visa infractions - which is what the threat that is perpetuated by visa agents is always suggesting.
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Sites like this one spread FUD about visas in Vietnam and well, it is to their financial benefit to keep people worried about it and to employ the use of their services in order to avoid ending up on the blacklist which again, I do not believe exists.
Of course a blacklist would exist if someone was charged and convicted of a serious violent crime and there is a story recently about a guy who did a breaking and entering, live-streamed the entire thing, and of course got caught. He also just happened to be overstayed on his visa as well. He got blacklisted and deported for the breaking and entering and also the grand larceny. The overstay on the visa was not part of it at all, despite what the visa agents will almost certainly say.
So on to my evidence of the blacklist not existing with 2 more examples of people who overstayed their visas by a long time. For their sake I am not going to use their real names because that wouldn't be cool at all.
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Both of these guys had gotten tired of not being able to travel anywhere, which is one of the major downsides of overstaying your visa. Your international travel capabilities are basically forfeit once you decide to violate visa rules and the two of them were quite good friends but had different levels of overstay. One of them was 15 months overstayed and the other person was a whopping 27 months overstayed. This all happened to them not because they were bad people but because during Covid when noone was allowed to go and get new visas outside of very strange and almost impossible to adhere to situations, they spent a year or more of getting extensions in-country.
As is common in Vietnam, a ruling was quickly passed in January of last year that stated that the borders were now open and now in-country visa extensions were no longer being offered. The announcement came 5 days before the visa amnesty program was to be ended. Both of these guys needed far more than 5 days to get their affairs in order so they just decided, as a team I guess, to overstay and face the music later.
It took more than a year for the officials to catch up with them.
Well both of them got an agent and paid some bribes which were surprisingly low given the amount of time that they had overstayed. Then they booked a flight that took them to Bangkok where they waited around for a few hours and then had a flight to come straight back to Vietnam.
While they were nervous about this process they informed me that at no point in time were they ever told "no" by anyone, nor where they even asked any questions at all about the previous stamps in their passport. The computer gave no indication to any immigration officials that they had overstayed, and they were shuffled through the lines both leaving the country and re-entering it, just like anyone else that was going through the line.
Basically their overstays weren't even acknowledged by any government official at any point. One of their overstays was one of the longest I have ever heard of at over 2 years.
If overstaying by more than 2 years doesn't result in getting put on this mysterious "blacklist" I have to say that I do not believe that it exists. At what point would Vietnam Immigration start to actually care enough to ban you if 2 years isn't enough? There are people that are in prison for shorter amounts of time than this.
I am not encouraging anyone to overstay their visas in Vietnam or anywhere else in the world. What I am encouraging is that you take anything that visa agents say with a grain of salt. It is directly to their benefit to keep their customers scared of things, even if these things don't actually exist. I do not believe the Vietnam overstay blacklist exists and I cannot find a single example of where it has.
Like you, I've never heard of anyone truly getting blacklisted and believe it is a scam. I think I know why the agents are doing this though because even though I haven't been here as long as you I have noticed a dramatic downturn in the amount of visa agents that exist here. I think that their industry was basically wiped out and now they are resorting to devious tactics in order to continue making money.
This is true. There used to be a visa agent on almost every street in the An Thuong / My An are. Now I am only aware of one that exists and he doesn't even have a sign out front. It is only by word of mouth or social media that you even discover that this guy exists at all.
There are a few, but I agree even though I think you have been here a lot longer than I have been. Visa agents are few and far between these days.
That's a very interesting view point to put across. It's a shame that there is so much misinformation out there to confuse us expats. We have faced something similar here in Thailand. We arrived by boat and all information we have been told is that we can only leave by boat or leave a very large amount of cash as a bond if we wish to leave Thailand without the boat. We trekked to marine immigration only to be told that we can pretty much come and go as we please as long as our entry/exit visas are up to date. Expat misinformation.
I was under the impression that slips all around the world can be held indefinitely as long as someone is paying for it. What a strange thing to lie about.
Guaranteed it doesn't exist. Agents are definitely useful to use, but in this case they hype something that does not exist for their own benefit. When I lived in the UK it was cheaper to pay an agent to deal with the documents than to travel into London for the day. If it makes financial sense then use them, but don't be conned by them.
I prefer to use agents because government will deny an entire stack of papers if there is one type on it even though it is quite obvious that nothing about the documents really changes just because someone did something like write "SEP" instead of September.
I pay the agents a little bit of money for peace of mind... but I still don't like being lied to so the hope being on their part that I will give them more money.
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