The locals are mostly workers, not capitalists with companies and salaried workers, so it's not "locals" exactly.

Looks you forgot yours at home. Lowering expenses (so wages) in a competitive free market works exactly like doping in cyclism: you'll be forced to if you want to stay alive.

But even without considering that, the business-owning "bourgeois" class not caring about their nation has no reason to be left unchecked by those whose job is to run a country.