Global Citizenship News: New Vietnam Golden Visa

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Transcript

Justin Keltner: 0:36

Vietnam is a country that's making a lot of buzz in the expat spaces. The city of Da Nang, a favorite among expats, has seen tremendous growth in the last couple of years, and was even featured in 2024 as one of the top places to visit by Conde Nast. There was just one slight problem. It was almost impossible to get residency. Expats would have to do visa runs every 90 days, which can get very complicated and expensive, and the visas that they had available for investment were actually quite restrictive in comparison to what neighboring countries were offering. Well, it seems that Vietnam is looking to make some changes to their immigration system. And they just proposed a new golden visa that would actually give you residency. Welcome to Entrepreneur Expat. I'm Amanda. This is Justin. And on this channel we talk about being digital nomads, investing internationally, international real estate visas, residencies, global citizenship, and making money from anywhere in the world. So if that's something that you're interested in, make sure to subscribe and hit the notification bell so you don't miss a single video that we have coming out on this channel. We have several videos coming out a week. To keep you up to date on all the things going on all around the world. And also make sure to give this video a like, because we have a mission to get in front of 1 million entrepreneur expats or aspiring expats. And if you're looking to get personalized support on your moving abroad journey. Then just go to entrepreneur expat.com/consult and you can talk with Amanda or myself or a member of our team one-on-one, talk about the challenges that you're facing, whether it comes to residency, tax planning, the logistics of moving abroad, all those different things we have you covered. And we've got a team of international experts all around the world that help with the taxes, the immigration, and everything else. So. You can get that@entrepreneurexpat.com slash consult. There's gonna be all the information that you need to schedule that call with us. So here is what's happening with Vietnam, which I find very interesting because, um, actually a lot of our commenters and subscribers, a last week on some of our videos, we're bringing up Vietnam as an option. And a lot of people were saying, yeah, you know, I would love to do Vietnam as an option in Southeast Asia, but I don't want to do those Visa runs, well, it seems that Vietnam, I don't know if they're paying attention to all our YouTube comments in the expat spaces, but it does seem that Vietnam is seeing an opportunity to really grow the country. And one of the ways in which they want to do it is they want more long-term tourists. They want more. Residents, uh, they want more returning travelers and also they want a lot of foreign investment to get pumped into their economy. They're seeing countries like Malaysia, uh, and Thailand and Indonesia really starting to grow very quickly in the region, and they're realizing, whoa, we need to compete. So it seems that the minister of the tourism board in Vietnam made a suggestion to the Prime Minister proposing some new visas that would allow people to get a long-term residency visa in Vietnam, uh, make it a little bit more flexible than what they previously had available. And in addition to that, bring a lot of foreign investment into the country. And the idea is they're gonna pilot it in the major cities like Hanoi and Ang Ong, Ang, no one knows how to pronounce it. Vietnam. Vietnam is hard. Something like that. Danang. That Danang. I went down a lot of rabbit holes about Vietnam. Yeah, we, we tried to get the pronunciation right. We tried, and I, I, the, the, the complicated thing about Vietnamese, there's a little, little sidebar, I mean. We learned Spanish pretty easily. I learned it in my three years of living in Columbia. But Spanish and English, in terms of like the pronunciation, I mean, it's phonetic and it's relatively easy to get, uh, at least the pronunciation if you, if you learn English. But Vietnamese in terms of all the different, it's, it's similar to, to, to Chinese and the fact that there's different. Uh, same kind of word written out, but just a different accent mark. And it's a totally different pronunciation. So we're still looking into, uh, maybe maybe learning a little bit of Vietnamese now because maybe we'll be going, uh, to Southeast Asia very soon and, and making a stop in, in Danang, uh, as, as one of our, one of our first stops. Yeah, it definitely seems like it's growing very quickly. So what is, what are the visas that they actually proposed? And when we say proposed, none of this stuff is. For certain, yet we don't even have numbers. So some of the numbers that we're gonna be giving you is just total speculation based on what's going on in the surrounding area. Because at this point it's just a proposal and we don't know how quickly they're gonna move on this. So here are the three Visa options that Vietnam is proposing. The first one is a 10 year golden visa, and this is for serious investors, entrepreneurs planning a long-term stay in Vietnam. After that, you have the 10 year investor visa. This one gives you the ability to become a permanent resident after five years. And it's very similar to the first in that it's for investors looking to establish a long-term presence in the country. And now we don't really know, like Amanda said, all of the specifics because this is still really like underground. They haven't come out with the numbers, they haven't finalized any of this. Uh, this is just what we're hearing in terms of what is in the works there. So maybe they're, they're gonna release this. In the next year or two, but we, we can't know for sure until it actually happens. Now, the third type of visa that they have is the special talent visa, and this one is targeting highly skilled professionals that can enhance the workforce there in Vietnam. And like we said, we don't know exactly what the numbers yet. But most likely, from what we've heard through the grapevine, it's probably going to be a six figure investment to be able to get these kinds of visas. These are for people that have got a lot of income and or a lot of savings and. Just are really frustrated with all the, the tourist runs, like the border runs that they have to make to neighbor neighboring countries like Thailand or Cambodia in order to renew that 90 day tourist visa that they get on arrival. So if you're wealthy and you want to have just more certainty and security in terms of your stay in the country, maybe gain a return on your investment as well by investing in the country, which is growing very rapidly than these types of visas will be. For you. One plausible scenario that people were talking about is, let's say for example, you do the investor visa and then they're like, okay, well you can invest in real estate and then we'll give you the residency based on the numbers going on in neighboring countries like Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia. They're saying Vietnam. We might be looking at an investment of, for example,$150,000. In real estate and then that would get you the residency. But of course we, we don't know. And what happens in emerging countries sometimes is like either they can move very quickly on things or they can take forever. So depending on how much money's on the table and who's asking Exactly. Uh, and one of the things that's going on with Vietnam, I think they're realizing that there's a lot of money, uh, on the table. And I know there's a lot of debate in Vietnam, in Mexico, in Portugal, in a lot of countries. Saying, okay, well now the country's gonna get inundated with foreigners. And it seems that most of the governments in these countries want the foreigners because that brings in a lot of, uh, investment into the country. So the downside is that it would, uh, bring the housing costs up because it's a simple supply and demand issue at the end of the day. And we are seeing that happen in Vietnam with more foreigners going there. But the upside is that there's more money circulating in the economy, which means more jobs. Uh, in Vietnam for the Vietnamese people. So a lot of these governments are realizing, wow, if I really wanna compete on this global stage, uh, I gotta get really competitive with what's going on with these residencies, these visas, who I'm allowing in, uh, what the requirements are, so on and so forth. So it seems that Vietnam's joining the game. Yeah, and I'll, I'll speculate too and say that because they're a socialist country, I mean, to some extent communists, but they call themselves a socialist. Uh, a socialist country and typically in countries like that, they tend to be a little bit, uh, a little bit slower to embrace foreign investment to, to embrace foreign cultures coming in and, and potentially like affecting their people or their beliefs because the state wants to have a, a certain degree of. Uh, shall we say, control or authority? Now, on the flip side of that, Vietnamese people tend to be very welcoming to Westerners. Um, also very welcoming, like to their belief system. And I think the key for the Vietnamese government is really to balance. Unwarranted foreign influence, if you will, to all of the potential for making money that they have by bringing in all this foreign investment, having people stay there longer and all that. And for those people that say, oh, like Vietnam is dangerous, it's a communist country. I mean, this is not the nineties anymore. Um, they used to say things like that as well about Malaysia because it was a Muslim country. And it's like, no, you're not gonna enter Malaysia and, and have issues because you, you believe in a different religion. In fact. Um, they're Malaysia's one of the most liberal of the Muslim nations and, and they also have some of the most open visa policies of any country in the world. And you can, you can do pretty much whatever you want there, like within reason. But they're very, uh, they're very open and supportive just like they are in Vietnam. Vietnam, you can do whatever you want as long as you don't criticize, you know, their government, their religion, um, then you're gonna probably, you know, that their politics, whatever it is, then you're probably gonna gonna run into some heat. But that's the same thing anywhere. Like we're in Mexico now as Americans. We don't go on the streets protesting the things that we maybe don't believe in or don't love about the Mexican government because that wouldn't be very smart. Right, exactly. It just wouldn't be a smart thing to do. And when you live the entrepreneur expat lifestyle or the global citizenship lifestyle, you didn't, you do tend to float. Above a lot of issues going on in multiple countries'cause they just don't affect you as much. And one interesting thing about Vietnam that a lot of people may not know,'cause we went down the Vietnam rabbit hole over the weekend when this news came out, is, um, it's actually an open economy. Mm-hmm. And that's one of the reasons why they, it's open ish. Yeah. Um, but that's the reason why they want the foreign investors coming in. They want investors in real estate, manufacturing business. All those kinds of things. So, uh, why Vietnam? Because I think it's one of those countries that, you know, in the expat spaces, we're starting to see videos about Vietnam all the time, like in the last year or so. But 10, 15 years ago, no one would've ever said, yeah, you know what, I'm looking to move to Vietnam. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's, that's very true. And. In, in the nineties, in, in the early two thousands, like the, the economy was not anywhere near what it is today. You didn't have necessarily the same type of infrastructure, uh, security in terms of the jobs of, of local people. It was still in disarray and in many ways and, and in big part recovering from the war that was there thanks to, um, you know, certain western nations. Right. Um, we won't go into that right now, but. It's, it's a, it's total night and day compared to what it was, 10, 15, 20, 30 years ago. And in addition to that, it's still not at the level, let's say that maybe Thailand is. And so what we've heard a lot, um, doing our, our research and hearing from people that have lived there, when you go to someplace like Thailand, in comparison, Thailand has already been. I don't wanna say colonized by the, the tourists and expats, because that's not the right word, but some Thai people might say something to that effect. Is it just, it's received a ton of, uh, foreign interest investment. Americans going there, uh, living there, buying properties. Even though you can't like fully buy it, you need certain type of, uh, like lease hold deals. Um, because you can't own the land in most cases in Thailand, but there, there's still more opportunities for foreign investment. But people are so accustomed to the foreigners that a lot of the, the country has been shaped around that instead of perhaps maintaining a bunch of, its, its sort of native appeal versus when you look at Vietnam, because it is, even though it's got the infrastructure, it's not fully catered to foreigners yet. And everything we've been hearing is that you can get a lot more of that. Really frontier vibe, like the native cultural experience. Granted, it's going to be more difficult if you don't speak the native language. For example, in, in Thailand, especially in some of the more touristy cities, uh, like Bangkok or or Chiang Mai, where there are a lot of foreigners. People are speaking a lot of English compared to Vietnam. Outside of those tourist neighborhoods, you'll find some English, but you're gonna wanna attempt to learn Vietnamese even though it's, it's a difficult language to learn if you truly want to blend in. But just by learning, not blend in, but, but, but to fit, into, integrate, to integrate into this society. And we would have a hard time blending it in Vietnam for sure. Mexico, maybe Vietnam, probably not. Um, but. In order to integrate, you do have to at least make an, an effort to learn some more of a language. But they say that even just by doing that to a, to a small extent, um, you can make friends a lot more easily because there's, there isn't that barrier of like, okay, you're a, you're a tourist. We're a local, we're gonna like cater to you and speak your language. It's just, again, it's more still tied to its roots and it's more, what would you call it, like more real. Authentic. Maybe Authentic, yeah. More of an authentic experience. That's what we've been hearing. We haven't been to Vietnam, uh, lately, but that's, that's what we've been hearing from a lot of people. Yeah. So other reasons why people are interested in Vietnam? The obvious one is low cost of living term. It's one of the cheapest countries actually in the world to go and live as an expat, at least in terms of the countries that, that you would want to go to, right? We're not talking about North Korea here, um, or, or elsewhere, right? But in terms of the. Um, the emerging markets that are, that are safe, that have the, the necessary infrastructure and everything else, um, very low. Cost of living for a high quality of life. Yeah. I mean, people were living very well. We were watching videos and people were living very, very well on 500 bucks a month. So you might wanna see like Mexico is like maybe 50% of what US would be. And then, you know, Vietnam, Thailand, Southeast Asia is like half of what Mexico would be, which is why we tell a lot of our Mexican friends who are interested in, I'm not great at math. What is that? 30% of? It's like 30. It's like. So you said half. Yeah. So Mexico is like half the cost of living of the United States, right? Ish. And then Southeast Asia is about half the cost of living of Mexico. So 25% roughly. I would say that's about right. You're better at numbers. I would say no. I would say actually it's less than, I would say it's less than half the cost of Mexico because for like a, a, you know, a nice three story house here, we're paying a little under a thousand USD per month in Vietnam, the same thing would be like closer to. 400, I think the apartments are going for two to 300 a month. Yeah, depending on the city. And these are in the tourist areas. We're not really in a super touristy area in Mexico. So I would argue that on average, maybe it's about 40% of the cost of Mexico, like 30 to 40%. So you're talking roughly. Uh, as, as little as a, a quarter of what you're spending to live in the US and if, if you're willing to live in town and not by the beach, maybe even less, like maybe a fifth or less. And, and that's like eating out. I mean, you can get meals there in Vietnam, like even in, in Danang for as little as$2, um, for the like traditional Vietnamese food and here the same kind of thing. I mean, you could get two tacos for that price in Mexico, depending on the city. Sure. But we're talking about like full sit down meal. Uh, restaurant like, like everything. So it, it definitely is cheaper. The rent's cheaper, the food's cheaper. Utilities are a lot cheaper. Uh, they're saying that for cell phone data, you could get that for like three or$4 a month in Vietnam. Versus here you're still paying 10, 15, 20, um, depending on how much, how much data you're using. So utilities are cheaper, rent's cheaper, all that. Yeah. So we actually had a comment come in. I think they were Mexican. They didn't say, but they spoke Spanish. And we do have a lot of people from Mexico who watch this channel. They're like, I wish I could sit at home. And earn in dollars. And I'm like, you can, right? We know people from multiple countries who are doing that, but I've also had conversations with a lot of our Mexican friends who are like, even if you earn in pesos or Mexican pesos, for example, you can go to a country with a lower cost of living than Mexico, work online and do the exact same thing that we we're doing. Absolutely, yeah. The dollars. Yeah. You could, you could go to Columbia and have a, a better. Um, ratio of your, your income to expenses there because of the currency arbitrage. So the other reason why people are very interested in Vietnam is because the global south area, which is that Southeast Asian area, is growing very rapidly in terms of development. And we are seeing a lot of business and investment opportunities show up. I mean, apple was looking at Vietnam, for example, and in the case of Vietnam, it's starting at kind of a lower base. Uh, because it took Vietnam a long time to recover from said war. So you could say that they're a little bit behind their neighbors, uh, insofar as the development, but they spent the last, you know, 15, 20 years really focusing hard on really bringing up the manufacturing and all those things in Vietnam. If you're watching from the United States, you've probably bought a shirt that says, made in Vietnam. Uh, for example, I bet this one is. Wanna check. Is it? Lemme see. I don't know. What does it say? It says made in China. So, no, not Vietnam close enough. But I definitely have a lot of things in my closet that were made there. Um, so one of the things that's interesting is Vietnam, because it's starting at a lower base. For those of you who are more adventurous, it could be a really good opportunity for those of you who like more, you know, frontier emerging market. Type of stuff. It seems that there is a lot of opportunity there, um, especially as the country continues to develop and I think, you know, in terms of why Vietnam, you know, 15, 20 years ago, nobody would've said that. It's the exact same thing we keep saying on this channel over and over and over again, particularly to the Americans, the Canadians, and the Western Europeans. You're getting competition now. Right. Whereas in the past, uh, particularly with the United States, there was no competition. No one would've ever dreamed of being living in Vietnam or even Mexico like 30 years ago. Mm-hmm. The way that people are doing it now, or Africa, we're seeing more and more people move to Africa. But we're seeing all these countries around the world really starting to, uh, develop well, number one, many of them have already developed very quickly where you can get a similar quality of life that you would in the United States, and then the others like Vietnam are on their way. So, you know, you have more options in the world now than you would've had 30 years ago if you are, for example, an American watching this. Um, and I think a lot of Americans don't know that. Like people outside of the United States know that. I've been having that conversation with a lot of Mexican friends and they're like, yeah, when Americans don't realize is other countries have been catching up and it's nipping up their heels. And this, this ties into what the US' greatest export ever actually is, which is entertainment. The, the United States greatest export is Hollywood. If it wasn't for all the entertainment that they put out into the world, I mean, the US would not be as, as safe or popular on the world stage as it is now. And that's not even saying much because as you can see, uh, and it's hard to, it's hard to tell when you're in the us but the more you travel, you realize. These, uh, quote, legacy brand countries as our friend nomad capitalist says, are not actually as powerful on the world stage as the media IE Hollywood and all of the narratives that, that are within these countries are trying to get you to believe. Um, and they use media and they, they use this, this like social, um. What's, what's the word? I I, I'll say social contagion, soft power. I mean, they're, they're soft power. Soft power. It's influence. Yeah. To convince you that everywhere outside of these countries is bad and everywhere inside is good. I'll give you a specific example. I know that the Trump government, for example, was having a few rifts with the, with the Colombian government. And whether this is related or not, I can't say for sure, but the State Department recently issued a level four travel advisory for a bunch of different areas in Columbia. Like they're telling people not to go even to Medellin, which granted Meine is not the safest city in the world. Um, it's a lot safer than some areas of major US cities. But the point is. They're leveraging the power that they have of you as a citizen and the media and everything else to convince you that everywhere outside of the borders of the US or Canada or wherever you are in Western Europe is bad and unsafe, and it's simply not true. And the world is becoming more and more multipolar every day. And if you're thinking about leaving the US because you're tired of the. Expenses, the cost of gas, the cost of insurance, the, the, the crappy medical care that you get there and, and all of the other things. Food going up, rent going up, healthcare not working, none, none of the systems working. A lot of business regulations. We had a comment come in, uh, not long ago from, we get this from both Canadians and Americans, although I will say we probably get it more from the Canadians, if I'm being honest, which is just overregulation and they're not able to actually have profitable businesses. As a result of it. So then they have to pivot and find other things to do. And that is also happening in the United States. Depending on what state you're in, it's worse than others, but it's definitely happening there as well. It's impossible to do business in California. You you're paying an$800 a year franchise tax, the healthcare costs are going up. Um, you have to, as a restaurant, you have to not only charge massive, basically massive tips and pass those costs on to your clients, but then also in LA the clients. The customers of the restaurant have to pay for the healthcare of employees. The costs are going through the roof. Insurance is going through the roof, property taxes, business taxes, and they don't even have water and fire hydrants, and the fire hydrants are empty. The roads are are full of potholes. The roads that we drive on every day in Guadalajara are better than most of the freeways that we've been on, been on in. Most parts of Los Angeles County. It's mind blowing. And you know, you guys are probably in your head. I've heard, I've heard they're thinking, okay, we're just Overhyping Mexico and Mexico isn't that great? I mean, Mexico is pretty good, but it's, it's not about how good Mexico is. It's about. Being in this pot as a boiling frog and not realizing how much things are getting dangerous and expensive and overly controlled every single day until it's too late. And it's not just Mexico because one of the things I did see from the expats in Vietnam, bringing it back to Vietnam. Is that they actually have pretty good roads in Vietnam because the government invested in infrastructure and in a lot of these emerging countries, you see governments invested massively into infrastructure. Whereas in Western countries, they're not really doing that, uh, anymore, which is why a lot of they're investing in infrastructure, just infrastructure in Ukraine. Oh, well that's a different story. Or other countries that aren't, yeah. United States or Germany, or Canada. By the way, Ukrainian, just, just for the record, so before you start talking shit, my mother was born in Odessa and I still, you know, I'm like, okay, great. Yeah, you wanna share money, share the wealth with other countries, perfectly fine. Don't do it to, to fuel political agendas, but hey, maybe help the homeless people on our own streets first. Or maybe fix the roads, fix the freeways. I don't know. Like there's potholes that I've seen in San Diego, bigger than the ones in Tijuana, and it's mind blowing, like you gotta take care of your own people first. So bringing it back to Vietnam and the newer visas and why people are interested in it, I guess Vietnam had visas before for investors, but they were far more restrictive. So one of the things that they're proposing. Is that in these new, uh, visa programs, by investment it's gonna be a lot more passive. So I guess what you have to do before is you had to have very active business ties in the country of Vietnam in order to qualify. And now it seems that one of the things they're proposing is actually loosening that up. So it could be like a real estate investment and you don't even necessarily like live there. We don't know, like we said, that's speculation at this point.'cause we don't have the official. Numbers or anything like that. But that is something that's very appealing to people who, for example, wanna lower cost of living. Uh, they're interested in Southeast Asia. Uh, they have some money to invest. They're interested in a company that's develop, uh, in a country. I. That is developing very quickly. Um, and they feel like they can get some yields out of that and then now potentially not have to be so active in the country as they were before so they can keep it moving, basically. Which a lot of people interested in these things like to keep it moving. Exactly. They don't wanna necessarily just stay in one country, put all of their money in that country, uh, even though Vietnam is having some pretty good yields on, uh, on their savings accounts, like up to 7%, which is. Several points higher than what you would get, uh, in the US even with like high yield savings. So that's something to be aware of. In Mexico, we have bank accounts that, uh, are earning as much as 10% interest or more just for savings, like pure savings. So there are really good investment opportunities outside of the us. Yeah, so that's basically what's going on with Vietnam. A lot of you were bringing up Vietnam in the Commons last week, and then everywhere we went on YouTube there was. Vietnam. So, and then they made the announcement, uh, a few weeks ago that they are actually considering more long-term stay visas, which was an issue before. For all the expats that were interested, when are they gonna officially launch this? We don't know. They're piloting, piloting it in the major cities like Hanoi and Ong. Um, so we'll just have to wait and see what happens and when we have more information, we will bring it to you guys. So make sure to subscribe and hit the notification bell so you don't miss any of the updates. Uh, we are currently living in Mexico, so you'll see a lot about Mexico, but we keep tabs on different countries because to be honest, it's quite a fascinating topic. You're never bored. Absolutely. And if, if you're looking to get more advice and some one-on-one help on your journey moving overseas, don't forget to go to entrepreneur expat.com/consult and you'll see all the information there to be able to book that consult with us or our team, and we can support you along the journey. Uh, whether it's saving money on those taxes, we have professionals for that. Getting your visas, uh, figuring out how to find real estate, we actually are building an international MLS system as we speak. So when you're on our email list, uh, you'll be notified of that. Uh, as well, you'll be the first to know. Uh, so definitely connect with us and, you know, find us on on LinkedIn, Instagram as well. Um, we're happy to, we're happy to chat and help you along your journey. Thanks so much for giving us your time today, and we'll catch you guys on the next one.