Vietnam Work Permit, LD2 Visa, and Labour TRC: From Short-Stay Entry to Residence Card

You entered Vietnam on an e-visa, tourist visa, or DN business visa, accepted a job offer, and now need to reach a labour TRC. You cannot apply for the TRC yourself. Your employer must get a work permit, then sponsor your conversion to an LD2 visa, and only then can the TRC application go in. A 2026 practitioner update reports that Vietnam is now issuing TRCs only to LD2 and TT visa holders, so workers entering on an e-visa, tourist visa, or DN business visa normally need an LD2 conversion before the TRC file can proceed.

Your Journey at a Glance

1. Arrive in Vietnam on an e-visa, tourist visa, or DN business visa and hand the employer the personal documents they need to file (passport copy, qualifications, police check from your home country, health certificate).
2. Wait while the employer files the integrated work permit dossier and the labour authority issues the permit, about 10 working days from a clean submission under Decree 219/2025.
3. With the work permit in hand, the employer sponsors your in-country visa purpose change to an LD2 visa through the Immigration Department.
4. Make sure your temporary residence is registered and stamped by the local police before the TRC file is submitted.
5. The employer files the TRC dossier and you receive an appointment slip.
6. Attend the immigration office in person to collect the card, normally within 5 working days of an accepted dossier.

> Requirements can change without advance notice. Confirm current rules with the Vietnam Immigration Department or a licensed practitioner before filing.

For a foreign worker building a stable base in Vietnam, securing housing, opening a bank account, putting health insurance in place, the labour TRC is the residency foundation that makes everything else easier. This guide is written from the applicant's side: what you actually do at each stage, what you are waiting on, and where the process tends to stall.

Note that employment status also affects health cover. Foreign workers under qualifying Vietnamese labour contracts may fall into compulsory payroll insurance, while many still buy private cover separately. See Vietnam health insurance for foreigners for how BHYT, local private plans, and international plans compare.

Who This Guide Is For

You are a foreign national already in Vietnam on a short-stay visa (tourist, e-visa, or business visa), you have a job offer or recent hire from a Vietnamese company, and you need to reach a legally recognised long-term residency status through the labour route.

If the job offer is for English teaching, the hiring side has its own checks around qualifications, teaching certificates, school sponsorship, and whether the role fits your background. See our guide to teaching English in Vietnam legally before assuming a school can sponsor the file.

This guide does not cover TT TRCs for spouses or dependents or DT-category TRCs for investors.

The Four-Stage Journey From Arrival to Card

Vietnam treats work authorisation and residency as separate steps that run in order. You cannot usually merge them into one. Skipping a stage or filing out of sequence is the single most common cause of an avoidable delay.

Stage 1: Tourist visa or e-visa arrival. You enter and remain on short-stay status while the employer gets paperwork ready. No work is legal on this status, even unpaid trial work.

Stage 2: Work permit. The Provincial People's Committee or its delegated labour authority issues a permit tied to one employer, one job title, and one province. Without the permit, no later step is possible. Decree 219/2025 (effective 7 August 2025) replaced Decree 152/2020 and merged the demand justification into a single dossier.

Stage 3: LD2 visa. Once the permit issues, the employer sponsors your conversion to an LD2 visa through the Vietnam Immigration Department. For this route, the LD2 visa is now the bridge between the work permit and the labour TRC.

Stage 4: Labour TRC. With LD2 in place, ward-level address registration completed, and at least 12 months remaining on the work permit, the employer files the TRC (Temporary Residence Card) dossier. The card is valid up to two years, capped by the permit's remaining validity. If the dates later drift apart, see what happens when a Vietnam TRC still looks valid but the work permit has expired.

LD1, work permit exemption, and LD2. LD1 is the work visa for foreigners who have a work permit exemption confirmation. The work permit exemption, often called WPE by employers and agents, is the labour-side proof that the worker does not need a standard work permit. LD2 is the work visa for foreigners who do need and hold a work permit. Because current TRC practice is being applied more narrowly, LD1 or WPE-based cases should be checked with the provincial immigration office before assuming a labour TRC will be issued.

Stage 1: Tourist Visa or E-Visa Arrival

What you control at this stage is mostly preparation. While you wait, the documents you bring or order from home decide whether the process is fast or slow.

Documents to have ready before you accept the job:

• Passport with at least 13 months of remaining validity (a shorter passport caps the TRC duration or blocks issuance)
• Degree certificates and transcripts, consularly legalised and translated into Vietnamese
• Letters from previous employers confirming job titles and dates, formatted to support your experience claim
• A criminal record certificate from your home country or current country of residence, issued within 6 months of filing
• A health fitness certificate from a recognised facility, valid within 12 months of filing

Document preparation, not government processing, is the longest variable in the whole journey. Practitioner sources consistently identify foreign-document legalisation as the step where most timelines slip. Order documents from your home country before you fly if possible, or be ready to courier them in.

On status while you wait. Your tourist visa or e-visa is the only thing keeping your presence legal. If it nears expiry while the employer prepares the work permit dossier, get it extended rather than letting it lapse. Overstay creates a separate compliance issue that complicates every later step and can trigger a re-entry ban.

Stage 2: Job Offer and the Work Permit

Once you sign the offer, the employer drives the rest. You hand over documents, sign forms, and wait. Reading public expat forums and country subreddits, the most common applicant frustration at this stage is silence from HR. The work permit is the gating step for everything else, so it is worth asking the employer specific questions at offer stage.

Questions to ask HR before signing:

• Will you file for the full term of my contract or a shorter trial term?
• Has my job title and degree been checked against Decree 219/2025 categories?
• Have you advertised the vacancy under the new 5-day notice rule, or do we need to start that now?
• Who will sponsor my LD2 visa conversion when the permit issues?

What Decree 219/2025 changed at this stage. The demand justification, where the employer explains why a foreign worker is needed, is now part of the same dossier as the work permit application. Standard processing is 10 working days from a complete submission, and a rejection decision must be issued within 3 working days. The job vacancy notice period has been shortened to 5 days, and the employer can choose its own advertising platform rather than being tied to the government portal.

Working in more than one province for the same employer. If the same employer needs you to work in multiple provinces, the employer no longer needs a separate work permit in each province. The work permit is handled by the province where the employer has its head office. Before you start work in another province, the employer must notify the labour authority there at least 3 working days in advance, including your passport details, work permit number, employer name, and planned start and end dates.

What changed for experts. Under Decree 219, the experience threshold for the expert category dropped to 2 years of relevant work (with a degree), down from 3 years under Decree 152. For experts in priority sectors, including finance, science and technology, innovation, and digital transformation, the requirement is further reduced to 1 year of relevant experience plus a matching degree.

A criminal record certificate fast track. Decree 219 introduced an online joint application route where the work permit and a Vietnam-issued criminal record certificate can be processed at once through the National Public Service Portal. This applies to certificates issued in Vietnam, so it is most useful if you have been in the country long enough to apply locally. For foreign-issued certificates, you still need consular legalisation in advance.

The applicant's role here is narrow but real. Sign forms accurately. Provide originals when asked. Push HR for a written timeline in days, not weeks. If your degree or job title does not cleanly match Decree 219 categories, the permit can fail at the labour authority stage. See qualification mismatch for what triggers this and how to fix it.

Stage 3: Converting to an LD2 Visa

This stage is now the part older guides often miss. Foreigners entering on e-visas, tourist visas, or DN business visas usually need the employer to convert the stay purpose to LD2 before the TRC application can go in. Practitioner alerts say this added step can add about two weeks to the overall in-country timeline.

Can you convert in-country, or do you need to exit? Under Law 47/2014/QH13 as amended by Law 51/2019/QH14 (Article 7, point 4), in-country conversion is permitted where the foreigner has a work permit and is sponsored by a Vietnamese employer. In practice, once the work permit is issued, the employer files for the LD2 visa through the Immigration Department, and you do not need to exit Vietnam. The LD2 visa issues from a valid submission in about 5 working days.

What happens if the work permit is not ready before your tourist visa runs out? This is one of the most common pinch points reported on Vietnam expat forums. Two practical paths are widely described:

• Extend the existing tourist visa or e-visa where extension is allowed, buying time while the work permit is finalised.
• Have the employer sponsor a DN1 business visa for you to exit and re-enter on, then convert to LD2 once the work permit issues.

Both routes are reported by practitioners and community sources. Which one fits your case depends on your nationality, the time left on your current visa, and your employer's experience with each route. Ask the employer or a licensed immigration agency before assuming either path is available to you.

Your role at this stage. Track the dates. Confirm with HR which visa your conversion will go through. Make sure your passport remains valid, and check that the next stamp or e-visa lines up with your work permit issue date.

Stage 4: The Labour TRC Application

With your LD2 visa in place and at least 12 months remaining on the work permit, the employer assembles the TRC dossier. Filing is online through the Ministry of Public Security e-portal, with hard copies delivered afterwards.

Step 1: Register Your Temporary Residence

Before the dossier can be filed, your address has to be registered under the khai báo tạm trú process. In practice, HR may ask for a printed or stamped temporary residence confirmation from the ward police. If you are renting, the landlord (your host) is usually the person who handles the registration, but this is often missed in informal rentals. Confirm it before HR assembles the TRC file.

Step 2: Hand Over TRC Documents to the Employer

You will be asked to provide or sign:

• Original passport with at least 13 months of remaining validity
• Valid LD2 visa
• TRC declaration form NA8, with a fresh passport-sized photo (2 by 3 cm, white background, front-facing, no glasses, taken within 6 months)
• Notarised copy of your labour contract
• Temporary residence registration confirmation, if requested by the immigration office or employer

The employer adds the NA6 sponsorship request, notarised copies of the business registration certificate and seal/signature records, and the authorisation letter for the person filing the dossier.

Step 3: Online Submission and Appointment Slip

The employer's authorised representative logs in using the company's VNeID account, uploads the dossier, and receives a confirmation. Hard copies are then delivered. On acceptance, the officer issues an appointment slip. The government TRC fee under Circular 28/2026/TT-BTC (effective 1 April 2026) is USD 145 for a card valid up to 2 years.

Step 4: Collect Your Card

You attend the immigration office in person to pick up the TRC. The employer cannot collect on your behalf. The card is normally issued within 5 working days of an accepted dossier. If the application is refused, the office issues written notice of the reason, and the clock restarts once the issue is fixed.

The 12-Month Validity Threshold

This is the single most consequential rule in the labour TRC route, and it is the source of a significant number of avoidable refusals.

The work permit must have at least 12 months of remaining validity at the moment the TRC application is filed. This is a fixed threshold. The immigration officer cannot waive it, and no extra paperwork makes it go away.

The practical implication. An employer who obtains a short initial work permit (say 14 or 15 months) and then spends weeks on the LD2 conversion may find the buffer eaten away by the time the TRC dossier hits the counter. The application is refused at intake, and the permit has to be extended first before the TRC can proceed.

What to do as the applicant. Ask HR what term the work permit is being applied for. If it is less than 24 months and the LD2 conversion is likely to take time, raise the question of whether the permit should be applied for at the longer term or whether the TRC dossier should be queued immediately on permit issue.

Where Applications Fail or Stall

These are the failure points most consistently reported by licensed practitioners and on widely cited Vietnam expat forums. Some are paperwork problems. Others are structural.

Wrong underlying visa at TRC time. A TRC dossier filed while the worker is still on an e-visa, tourist visa, or DN business visa may be returned at intake. Complete the LD2 step first.

Less than 12 months left on the work permit. Covered in detail above. The fix is to extend the permit first, not to file and argue.

Work permit expiry or cancellation after the TRC is issued. Do not rely only on the printed expiry date on the card. A labour TRC depends on the underlying work permit and employer sponsorship. If the work permit expires, is cancelled, or the job ends, ask HR or immigration how to regularise your stay before relying on the TRC for work or re-entry.

Qualification or job title mismatch on the work permit. The labour authority checks your degree, your prior experience evidence, and the job title on the application. Mismatches block the permit and therefore block everything downstream. The Decree 219 thresholds (2 years for experts, 1 year for priority sectors) apply only with a matching degree.

Paper-company sponsorship. Practitioner sources warn that some smaller employers route the application through a third-party "service" company rather than the actual employer. This can lead to permit cancellation, fines, or TRC refusal if the immigration office finds the contracting company does not match the worker's real role.

Passport with less than 13 months of validity. A short passport caps the card validity, and in some offices triggers refusal at intake. If your passport is within 18 months of expiry, renew before the TRC stage.

Photos outside specification. Wrong size, non-white background, glasses worn, or older than 6 months. Each of these returns the dossier and restarts the clock.

Missing temporary residence confirmation. Some offices or employers ask for proof that your address has been registered before the TRC file is accepted. Confirm what format they want before submission.

Out-of-date company documents. The business registration and seal copies in the dossier must be current and notarised. Old copies from previous filings are a common return cause.

Provincial variation. Procedures in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City are relatively well-established. Smaller provincial offices may apply local interpretations. If you are working outside the two main cities, ask the local immigration office or a practitioner to pre-check the dossier.

Forum-reported applicant frustrations. Two themes recur on Vietnam expat groups and country subreddits. First, HR silence: workers describe weeks of no updates between stages and only realising late that a document is missing. Second, mismatched promises at hiring: candidates told that a business visa is "fine for now" and finding months later that no work permit was ever filed, leaving them to exit and restart. Both point to the same fix: ask for written stage dates at the offer stage.

Processing Time and Costs

The 5-working-day TRC processing window starts only when the dossier is accepted as complete. Returns restart the clock. Practitioner sources report that almost all lost time is in document preparation, not in official processing.

Realistic total timelines from the start of the work permit application:

• Documents already in Vietnam and in order: about 4 to 6 weeks from work permit filing to TRC collection, reflecting the 10-working-day work permit step under Decree 219 plus the LD2 conversion and TRC steps, with the new 2-week extension for the LD2 bridge.
• Foreign documents requiring legalisation and translation: 6 to 9 weeks, with consular legalisation as the main variable.

Costs:

• Work permit fees: VND 400,000 to VND 1,000,000 depending on province (paid by the employer)
• TRC government fee: USD 145 for a card valid up to 2 years, under Circular 28/2026/TT-BTC (effective 1 April 2026)
• Agent or licensed practitioner fees: extra. Cost varies by scope of service

Confirm current work permit fees with the relevant Provincial People's Committee or its delegated labour authority before filing, since rates are set locally.

Key Sources

• Vietnam Immigration Department, xuatnhapcanh.gov.vn
• National Public Service Portal, dichvucong.gov.vn
• Decree 219/2025/ND-CP, replacing Decree 152/2020 and Decree 70/2023 (effective 7 August 2025)
• Circular 28/2026/TT-BTC on entry, exit, transit, and residence fees (effective 1 April 2026)
• Ministry of Home Affairs (formerly Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs)
• KPMG Vietnam, "Decree 219 regulating foreign workers working in Vietnam" (2025)