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This is the entire reason - the very wealthy are the ones inviting politicians to their parties, paying for legacy media to broadcast their opinions and convincing people to go into huge debt in order pay money to go to university and become enforcers of their ideology. But if you want to disagree with them that's really uncool and lame and potentially even bigoted - yeah sure you're signing your children and grandchildren up for immense misery and deprivation, but you wouldn't want to look like one of those dirty truckers, would you?
Immigration has always functioned like this in the modern world - a weapon used by the very wealthy against the rest of society in order to entrench their advantages at the cost of society's longer term stability, functioning and prosperity.
Until very recently, immigration was popular. When polled, more Canadians have been saying that the immigration rate should be higher than have been saying it should be lower. Even among those who are against immigration, it's mostly not an important issue. This is why every major party has either supported maintaining a high level of immigration or raising it even higher. The only party that says they'll lower the immigration rate only got 5% of the vote in the last election.
That doesn't actually argue against the point I was making at all. Heroin and Fentanyl, based on whether or not people use them, are extremely popular and people make the choice to use them on a frequent basis despite the incredibly well known downsides of doing so. A heroin addict declaring that he really likes heroin and wants to do more heroin, and who votes solely to make sure the "don't do heroin" party doesn't get into power, is still going to get addicted and deal with the consequences of heroin.
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I'd actually extend this to the pre-modern world as well. It has often been a popular thing among rulers, and recognized as such, to surround themselves with foreigner and foreign classes.
A foreigner is in theory immune to many things that could persuade a local to turn against the ruler. Ambitions to replace one or be a big part of another administration are a non starter. There are no preexisting loyalties to abstract principles such as the nation or the people. Even less so to local rivals.
He is also solely beholden to you as the grantor of his position and has no choice but to actively defend you if he seeks to retain his position and his life, where a local might be tempted to passivity and inaction.
That said, the Goth bodyguard or the Swiss mercenary is rarely a sign of strength. It's usually employed by rulers who have internal enemies so serious they're already a foot in the grave. And the aforementioned principles can end up invalidated by the Goth himself.
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