I had to read this. It's nice to see a Singaporean voice in this journal. It's an author I like, and this story is set in Singapore about our strict laws. Well... This is 'A Very Safe Place' by Rachel Heng, published in The New Yorker on October 4, 2026.
Told in the voice and perspective of nine-year-old Shawn, it's not quite a story with a happy ending. Shawn and his father Chee Meng found a shirtless man on the beach in the easternmost part of Singapore, and took him home. He seemed to have swum to Singapore in search of a better life. He wasn't caught by the coast guard. He is in the country now, living in Chee Meng's home for two weeks and counting. This man is an illegal immigrant.
I was already like, errmmm.... are we really going there? This touches on our policy of not accepting refugees of any sort and we're not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol.
The man recovered from his ordeal of getting to Singapore. But he didn't know our laws. He had no passport, no permit, no sponsor, nothing. He went out looking for a job just like that, at a provision shop downstairs Chee Meng's home. I don't know how naive immigrants are today, but this is one sure-fire way to get caught. For a nine-year-old, the author has painted Shawn to be really mature for his age.
Shawn’s nerves were jangling. What was the stranger trying to do? Had the family taken him in out of the goodness of their hearts, only for him to go out in the world and expose them like that? And no one would hire him this way. Why, even if they wanted to, he would need a work permit—that was how things were in this orderly land. Shawn knew that the man didn’t even have a passport on him, had heard his parents questioning him repeatedly about this to no avail. Confusingly, Shawn found himself now worrying about the stranger, feeling sorry about the futility of the man’s quest. The shopkeeper’s brusque response would no doubt be repeated over and over again. In some obscure way, Shawn felt responsible for protecting the stranger against the slights of his unyielding countrymen.
Shawn's mother didn't want this man in her home. Yet Chee Meng, for a grown adult man, seemed to be really dumb. He's putting himself and his entire family at risk for an illegal immigrant. I'm not sure that he could see the whole picture of having to also support this man his entire life, and not even thinking how medical bills might go. It's so weird. The family dynamics changed, they became more secretive, and it affected Shawn loads in terms of him worrying about the police and the legal repercussions of harboring an illegal immigrant.
So the story ended in the only way it could — Chee Meng making the decision to leave the stranger on the beach they found him at, and pretending this episode didn't happen.
What he would not see: three small figures standing on a deserted beach on the lip of all that light. He would not see Chee Meng shove the stranger toward the water; he would not see Shawn take one step forward and then one back; he would not see the stranger standing alone and mournful on the sand, watching father and son disappear into the trees, get into their car, and begin the long drive back to the safety of their silent home.
The story flagged out all police signs, helpful reminders, and for people to report suspicious activities and crimes everywhere. The state wants people to live an ordered life within the laws without any sort of deviation even in the smallest manner. Is it oppressive? The feeling of having done something illegal?
It's not quite a standard story about immigrants in Singapore, but it's a common story. People somehow still try to swim here because they have no idea how small the country is, and how difficult it is to stay here without papers. Residents here can't technically help an illegal immigrant even on humane grounds. They definitely can't hire them. It's a huge risk for any business.
Our underbelly of society is too thin and not enough to offer illegal stayers any sort cover for an extended period of time. Although we do have many instances of over-stayers, who have surprisingly found some way to make a living and survive in Singapore for say, 20 years or so without being caught. It's certainly painting the state in a most pragmatic light.
In this story, there's a lot of Singlish used, in the names of the people, and even 'rotan'. I'm not sure whether people get it, but it's out there for everyone to read and have their own takeaways from this story.
In an interview with Deborah Treisman at the journal, the author is asked if the strict laws matter much in this story.
A lot of the drama of the story revolves around Singapore’s strict laws. If the stranger is discovered, he faces imprisonment and caning. So perhaps do those who have harbored him. The government and society argue that these laws are what keep Singaporeans safe, yet they are also what make it a dangerous place for people like the stranger. Does this contradiction make Singapore a particularly rich setting for fiction?
I think every society makes choices about what trade-offs it is willing to make—whose liberties and whose safety are prioritized. Perhaps some Singaporeans have been steeped in these choices for so long that those trade-offs have become invisible or are no longer questioned. That is as true here in the U.S. as it is in Singapore.
Singapore is a particularly rich setting for fiction, I think, because of the many ways in which it is seen as a kind of success story by the rest of the world, and because so many aspects of Singaporean society—safety being just one of them—are held up as something to emulate. I’m not here to say whether the country is or isn’t a success. As a fiction writer, I’m more interested in the human calculus of those decisions and trade-offs, what they mean for the individuals caught up in them.
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