Vietnam tightens grip on "tracking" foreigner whereabouts starting 15-September

Mostly I am for this but at the same time I don't like authoritarian states and being watched all the time. However, I do realize that Vietnam is a communist country and this level of watching us really isn't that bad when you think about it.

When I think of the concept of communism that I have had my entire life I envisioned armed soldiers being everywhere and there being a ton of rules to do absolutely anything.

Vietnam is basically the opposite of that and this new set of rules that goes into effect today regarding information gathering and sharing doesn't really bother me all that much.

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Vietnam has been called the safest SE Asian country on a lot of lists and having been here for nearly 7 years and never experiencing anything that I would consider dangerous, I can agree with that notion. A lot of this has to do with how I live my life but honestly, you can go anywhere and do whatever and as long as you don't start the trouble, there is a good chance that trouble is not going to find you.

Then some bad stuff started happening along with the increased level of foreigners that started to visit Vietnam as their tourism industry just started to explode.

There was an incident where an American dressed in a delivery outfit of GRAB, which is a very popular service like Uber here in Vietnam. He thought that with this anonymous looking outfit that he would be able to rob a jewelry store, assault the elderly security guard, and get away with it.

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It took them 14 hours to find him because he is an idiot who somehow didn't know that this entire city is covered in CCTV's so all they had to do was follow his motorbike path back to his apartment. What an idiot! But I'm glad they caught him.

There was another incident involving a mentally unstable Australian who decided to wreck a coffeeshop and destroy phones and computers of strangers as well as break windows and all the stuff in the shop. They caught this guy before he left the coffeeshop.

But these incidents are rare and people get caught for this sort of thing. The problem that Vietnam is facing right now is that people are coming in on tourist visas and then simply not leaving. There is also the rather annoying aspect of many people and while I don't mean to call out a nationality specifically it is often young Russian men, who seem to feel as though the laws do not apply to them. They are always on the move and officials have not been able to track them.

That all changes today.

Every business large and small that rents a room or a house to anyone must provide detailed passport and visa information to immigration officials right away and continue to do so every time a property is rented out.

Honestly, I can't believe this wasn't already in place but apparently there was some sort of western-feeling privacy laws that were surrounding this information.

However, and the main reason why I am in support of this ruling that goes into affect today is because if Vietnam doesn't do this, the knee-jerk reaction could be to just start limiting who can come in, how long they can stay, and whether or not visas are going to be renewable.

At the moment there is no talk about changing the way things are now and while it might seem like a silly thing, the kind of person that would don a Grab uniform and rob a jewelry store, is the kind of person that when faced with renewing a visa, will choose not to do so. But what do they do when nobody will rent to them? I think mostly they would just choose to leave the country because like most criminal cowards, they are always looking for the path of least resistance.

By forcing people to have valid visas, we are already weeding out the sort of people that are going to be troublemakers anyway. When you have too much lenience on people who are breaking the laws by overstaying visas, you can bet that the mindset of certain people out there is going to be that the rules don't apply to them.

I'm happy to see the rules start to apply to people because I would prefer that Vietnam remain the "safest country in South East Asia." I also would prefer to not see limitations suddenly put on visas.

And they are doing quite the opposite actually. Along with this information sharing reform the Vietnamese government also introduced two new types of visas for people working here, even digital nomads. If you can prove that you have a certain level of expertise in technology you can apply for and maybe receive a 5-year visa. There are also "golden ticket" visas reserved for people significantly more wealthy than you and I but still, it is nice to see Vietnam looking to expand their visa options rather than just seeing a problem like criminality and then deciding to close the door on everyone whether they have anything to do with the crime or not. We don't need a Minority Report sort of society anywhere.

I don't really see any downside to providing your passport and visa status in order to rent a room and if anyone can tell me what that could be, please do tell?