No, they just outright didn’t pay me most months. My visa status depended on my employment, so there was not much I could immediately do. So I kept my head down, got paid as much as I could, and started my own company to decouple my employment from my visa status as soon as reasonably possible. The director openly mocked me for doing so, but I’m the one still in business.

It’s OK, we can talk frankly about bribes. Early on, I decided not to pay bribes. It’s been twelve years or so, no problems have arisen so far. All paperwork I’ve submitted has been processed within a reasonable amount of time, although I am quite good at bureaucracy. The one time it wasn’t due to a glitch (registering to receive Covid vaccination), I called my Party representative and she sorted it out within a day. They were really trying to get the vaccination numbers up, so it was not very difficult.

To provide some context, labor / immigration law compliance of foreign workers in Vietnam has typically been poor. So a lot of people say “oh, you have to pay bribes”, when what they are actually doing is trying to rationalize away the fact that they are breaking the law, e.g. driving without a license or working on a tourist visa, and then searching for someone to bribe to try and escape consequences.

I’m not going to claim that every government official is honest, but I do feel that we get a distorted view of the situation – these are mostly just people finding what they are looking for. Most of the stories I hear online are from the people paying bribes making themselves out to be a victim – “on the ground” what I see is people bragging about being above the law.

It’s gotten better in recent years though. More people are coming to Vietnam to work honestly than before, and they are more qualified. On our side of things, more government systems are becoming digitized and online. I’m hopeful that it will continue getting better.