Was it ever to easy to find a remote job? You have to understand that there are 2 things going against you:
1. Remote jobs are (and have always been) relatively rare.
2. There's lots of additional tax/paperwork complexity to hiring foreigners (in your particular case, for US companies trying to hire people who are not americans). That limits the opportunities for remote work even further.
It's not impossible to find remote work at a company from a different country but it's very hard (and have always been hard).
The best strategy is to do something outstanding, that will get you noticed. The better you look to potential employer, the more likely they'll be to invest additional effort into hiring you.
A total side-note: there's no such thing as "average of 17 years of experience" when you're talking about just one person.