Australia’s Immigration Minister Chris Evans and Vietnam’s Public Security Minister General Le Hong Anh signed an Exchange of Immigration Information memorandum of understanding (MoU), Senator Evans’s office said.

“Minister Anh and I discussed the international borders in our region,” said Evans, on a four-day visit to Vietnam.

Evans also proposed setting up a working group “to generate open discussion of the bilateral relationship and migration-related issues of mutual interest.”

Also Tuesday, a senior British diplomat signed a legal framework for law enforcement cooperation with Vietnam’s Public Security Deputy Minister Senior Lieutenant General Le The Tiem, the British Embassy said.

The “treaty will map out a comprehensive legal framework for UK -Vietnam law enforcement cooperation,” said the British embassy on its website, without publishing the agreement itself.

Britain’s Sir Peter Ricketts, permanent under secretary of the Foreign Office, also signed a broader MoU with Deputy Foreign Minister Nguyen Quoc Cuong that included a section on migration and organized crime.

Among the aims was to have “fewer Vietnamese entering the UK illegally” and the “regular, rapid and sustained return of immigration offenders,” according to a copy of the MoU published on the British website.

The bilateral pact also aimed for “increased prosecutions and reduced occurrences of crimes such as cannabis production, drug trafficking, e-crime, money laundering and organized migration crime, child sexual abuse.”

Source: AFP