HCM City has around 2 million residents who are residing overseas or developing cooperative ties with their compatriots in the city. The figure was released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at a meeting in HCM City on October 30 to review ten-year implementation of the Politburo’s Resolution 36 on Overseas Vietnamese (OVs) affairs. Most of the OVs are residing in developed countries and 80% of them are given citizenship in the countries of their residence. The Party and State have introduced a number of preferential policies on visa exemption, retaining Vietnamese citizenship, investment encouragement and house ownership, creating the best possible conditions for OVs to return to the homeland. The Association for Liaison with Overseas Vietnamese (ALOV) branches in some HCM City districts have worked with legal aid offices, tax bureaux and the police to help OVs adhere to laws when carrying out business, citizenship and driving license registration, tax declaration, and inheritance procedures, as well as dealing with difficulties. From 2004 to June 2013, more than 5.3 million OVs returned home through HCM City’s Tan Son Nhat International Airport and most of them registered for temporary residence in the city. More than 3,000 OVs came back and 9,234 OV businesses were granted long-term stay in the city. Over the past 10 years, banks and credit orgnanisations have lured more than US$33 billion in OV remittances, contributing to stabilising the national economy. OVs have donated more than VND70 billion to social and charitable programmes in its 24 districts and towns. Participants at the meeting, however, agreed ALOV has yet to fully exploit OV intellectualism, primarily in business production and technology development, or to pay due attention to promoting people-to-people diplomacy and Vietnamese cultural abroad The Vietnam Fatherland Front Central Committee’s HCM City chapter asked ALOV to conduct regular meetings with OVs to address their complaints and desires and to help young OVs to return home. VOV