We should not expect everyone to be a horrible person, only motivated by profit, but we also should not expect people to act against their own interests all the time.
What the submitter should be asking themselves, is whether they can pull a higher wage working from their current location with any other company. If they can do that, they should. If they can't, and it's likely that they cannot because most companies are operating similarly, then they're getting a fair market rate for their situation. That's the free market.
"The only reason the company hired someone overseas was to make more money. They would not have even considered these candidates if they weren't hugely more profitable. Instead, the company would have hired from the local labor market instead."
Yeah, what you are describing is practically the definition of exploitation of labor by capital, and alienation of the worker from the value they create.
Not the only reason: I have plenty of times hired people who had skills we needed and couldn't find locally. Sometimes brought those people over on H-1B, sometimes just hired them remote. And then if we had a few in the same area, opened an engineering office (though these days I am less likely to do that unless the folks really wanted it).
But it would be a great motivator if they actually bothered to relocate you in case you showed remarkable performance and added value to the company.
"We just want someone to work for cheap without prospect of progress" tells me that job will have a low ceiling for someone that wants to progress further their career
Ding ding ding - we have the winner here. In my company, all new headcount is from cheaper countries. We are no longer hiring in the US.