Ho Anh Vu, head of the Citizen Protection Division, and Assistant to the Director of the Consular Department under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), spoke to VietNamNet about the issue.

Can you tell us about the current situation of Vietnamese citizens’ illegal immigration abroad and their forced labor?

I remember that at 12:25 am on May 30, 2023, when Tan Son Nhat Airport received the last incoming international flights of the night, officers of MOFA and other agencies were present there to give support and fetch a group of 60 Vietnamese citizens who were being repatriated after being rescued from a casino near Manila in the Philippines.

Prior to that, on May 4, the Filipino police had rescued 437 Vietnamese citizens, mostly young people, who had entered the Philippine territory not long ago and were forced to work in harsh conditions with restricted contact; and they were often beaten.

A burning issue emerging recently is that Vietnamese citizens are falling into scammers’ traps by departing Vietnam illegally for other countries and becoming forced laborers in Southeast Asia. 

Scam rings post information and talk about making friends on popular social networks and apps. They promise easy jobs and high pay of $800-$2,000 a month and a good allowance for workers, with no qualification requirements.

With such attractive promises, the scammers can easily entice Vietnamese to take the jobs they offer. But in reality there is no such easy job with high pay as advertised. The workers have to work as they are told, mainly for online scams, some of which entice others to join online games and porn chats.

At the "working facilities", they don’t have freedom, and they have to pay a ransom if they want to quit their jobs and return to Vietnam. In some cases, Vietnamese are brought to places in border areas, or to countries where Vietnam doesn’t have diplomatic representatives. 

Can you tell us about the efforts to protect Vietnamese citizens by Vietnamese authorities?

It is estimated that in 2022 alone, tens of thousands of citizens returned from neighboring countries.

You might have heard about the rescue of hundreds of people of different nationalities, including Vietnamese, from a casino in Sihanoukville, Cambodia in April 2022. Dozens of Vietnamese citizens ran away from the working place and crossed the Binh Di River in An Giang province and got support when entering Vietnam in August 2022.

In 2023, after the rescue of 437 Vietnamese from the Philippines, MOFA worked with the Philippines and conducted consular procedures to protect 183 Vietnamese citizens out of more than 2,000 people at a forced-labor place in Alabang, in Las Pinas.

Besides the Philippines, Vietnam’s representative agencies in Southeast Asia have joined forces with host countries to rescue and repatriate 400 workers so far this year.

Do authorities face any difficulty during the citizen protection process?

Currently, with the open entry policy, Vietnamese citizens can travel between ASEAN countries without visas. This has been exploited by criminal rings who bring Vietnamese people abroad and turn them into illegal workers. The Vietnamese who leave Vietnam this way become illegal residents in other countries because the entry visa waiver is valid only for a short time and is not applied to people entering to work.

As such, they can’t register any residence in the destination countries or get a legal working permit, and, especially, they are not protected by appropriate local authorities. The people face the risk of being discovered, jailed or expelled from the countries.

It is easy to leave Vietnam, but it is very difficult for illegal workers to return to Vietnam, because of many reasons. 

First, most of the workers have no registration with Vietnam’s representative agencies in the host countries. Second, approaching and rescuing citizens detained in centralized working facilities is not an easy job. Third, it takes time to follow the procedures for citizen protection. For the time being, Vietnam’s representative agencies arrange temporary accommodations and food for the workers. Some host countries require very complicated procedures.

Second, approaching and rescuing citizens detained in centralized working facilities is not easy.

Third, it takes time to follow the procedures for citizen protection. Vietnam’s representative agencies have to arrange temporary accommodations and food for the workers. Some host countries require complicated procedures.

Fourth, it is difficult to persuade other countries not to apply sanctions on Vietnamese citizens for their violations, especially when they work for casinos.

Thai An