Socialist Republic of Vietnam

HA NOI — The millions of Vietnamese people living and working abroad are a national treasure, playing an important role in and making effective contributions to the process of building the nation of Viet Nam, said Deputy Foreign Minister Nguyen Phu Binh.

"We highly value the overseas Vietnamese community’s contributions to their fatherland," Binh said in a recent interview with the Associated Press.

The overseas Vietnamese community functions as a bridge of friendship in promoting understanding, cooperative relations, and positive feeling between their resident countries and Viet Nam, he added.

Binh is also chairman of the Committee for Overseas Vietnamese Affairs. He said that the committee is focusing on four major goals and approaches for attracting more overseas Vietnamese to invest and do business in Viet Nam:

First, the committee will propose policies to facilitate overseas Vietnamese in returning home and dealing with matters of immigration or applying for or renouncing citizenship. These proposals include allowing overseas Vietnamese to hold dual citizenship, when to so hold would be in line with international practice. Under these proposed policies, Viet Nam will also ensure rights of overseas Vietnamese to inherit property and own real estate.

Second, the committee will urge the Government to create favourable conditions for overseas Vietnamese scientists, academics, artists and professionals to return home, not only to help the country develop its technology but also to help them develop their own businesses and qualifications.

Third, the committee will encourage the Government to pay greater attention to the spiritual and cultural lives of overseas Vietnamese by providing regular information on domestic news and culture to overseas Vietnamese abroad through television, publications and the internet, as well as through the help of artists performing overseas. The Government must encourage the exchange of culture between artists at home and abroad and will create favourable conditions for artists and athletes to return home as well as for artists and athletes at home to travel abroad.

Lastly, the committee will promote the encouragement of Vietnamese language study among expatriates, especially the younger generations. Parents abroad have raised concerns over their children losing the Vietnamese language, and only few now have the opportunity to study and use their mother tongue abroad. Support will be diverse and take the form of providing textbooks, airing Vietnamese teaching programmes on television, and establishing Vietnamese language schools for the Vietnamese community abroad.

Younger generations of overseas Vietnamese are of prime concern to the Committee for Overseas Vietnamese Affairs, said Binh. Last year, the committee opened its first summer camp, which lasted for two weeks, for 90 young people from different overseas Vietnamese communities abroad. The second camp is expected to take place this coming July.

The committee also plans to organise annual Vietnamese language courses each summer for children living abroad and encourges them to return home to more fully study the mother tongue.

The number of overseas Vietnamese who return home to visit relatives or work has surged to 430,000 in 2004 from just 8,000 in 1986, the first year of renewal in Viet Nam. The lunar New Year festival in 2005 alone saw 200,000 overseas Vietnamese paying visits, accounting for one-sixth of foreign arrivals.

The Vietnamese community abroad has remitted some US$3 billion annually, contributing not only to improving their relatives’ living conditions but also to developing the national economy and society, said Binh.

The Government has been working on legal reforms to make the remittance process more convenient and in line with the laws of both Viet Nam and expatriates’ resident countries, Binh added.

Viet Nam News, April 2, 2005