FP’s guide to the 2026 tournament

Various forms of unfree labor have been a feature of U.S. society since the first tobacco plantations were established in the early English colonies. From trapping English and Irish immigrants in indentured servitude to subjecting kidnapped Africans to chattel slavery, and from tying freedmen to plantations in Jim Crow-era sharecropping arrangements to exploiting Mexican Bracero guest workers and interned Japanese Americans during World War II, the U.S. economy has always relied on the exploitation of socially marginalized and legally vulnerable workforces.

Today, the U.S. agriculture industry in particular continues to depend overwhelmingly on undocumented workers excluded from U.S. citizenship and threatened by potential deportation—and thus at an immense power disadvantage with their fully enfranchised, politically connected employers.

Various forms of unfree labor have been a feature of U.S. society since the first tobacco plantations were established in the early English colonies. From trapping English and Irish immigrants in indentured servitude to subjecting kidnapped Africans to chattel slavery, and from tying freedmen to plantations in Jim Crow-era sharecropping arrangements to exploiting Mexican Bracero guest workers and interned Japanese Americans during World War II, the U.S. economy has always relied on the exploitation of socially marginalized and legally vulnerable workforces.

Today, the U.S. agriculture industry in particular continues to depend overwhelmingly on undocumented workers excluded from U.S. citizenship and threatened by potential deportation—and thus at an immense power disadvantage with their fully enfranchised, politically connected employers.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is making undocumented workers more vulnerable than ever by simultaneously hardening exclusionary immigration policies while expanding guest worker programs. Despite running on a pledge to purge the country with mass deportations, visa programs such as the H-2A and H-2B are actually increasing the size of the foreign workforce.

According to labor unions, anti-trafficking groups, and migrant advocates, these guest worker programs are also rife with abuse, including human trafficking, forced labor, sexual assault, wage theft, and even incidents of what U.S. prosecutors have called “modern-day slavery.”

If the exploitation of migrant labor sounds familiar to World Cup fans, it’s because we heard a lot about it four years ago in the run-up to the 2022 Men’s World Cup in Qatar. Dozens of migrant workers within Qatar’s infamous “kafala” system died during the construction of new football........

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