On June 11, the FIFA World Cup 2026 kicked off in Mexico, which, along with the United States and Canada, is cohosting this year’s tournament in an ostensible display of continental unity.From the get-go, the whole shared hosting concept was rather ludicrous, given that one of the hosts is particularly bad at playing with others. For starters, the US maintains a system of overzealous visa restrictions and “travel bans” for citizens of an array of nations, which renders an already socioeconomically exclusive event even more so and shatters the illusion of international camaraderie that the World Cup is supposed to embody.The US also presides over an insanely militarised frontier with cohost Mexico, a country US commander-in-chief Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to bomb and invade. In other unsportsmanlike behaviour, Trump has referred to Mexicans as criminals, drug dealers and rapists; in 2019, The New York Times reported his suggestion that US soldiers shoot migrants and that an alligator-filled moat be installed along the border.Upon reassuming office last year, Trump in effect closed the US border to asylum seekers and economic refugees, a charming move, seeing as the US is responsible for much of the global upheaval that forces folks to migrate in the first place.A young man I know from the violence-racked Mexican state of Michoacan recently found himself obliged to pay $10,000 to a coyote, or migrant smuggler, to have himself hoisted by rope over the border fence into th …
