Ethics would be done, they generally agreed, by letting him in. And then a man quietly put up his hand to make a point. He was, he told us, from South Africa. To him, Sal's situation was not hypothetical. That implies that the principles themselves are fungible, flaccid, and fluid.
Ethics does, however, depend on context.
Sal's circumstances in rural America were radically different from those in modern South Africa. So, it seems, are the appropriate resolutions. All of which reminds us of a crucial point, which is that there is no formula for ethical resolution. Each dilemma is nested within its own context. And the most instructive dilemmas are, like Sal's, drawn directly from real-life experience.