You are completely correct; what it’s doing is not presenting new ideas so much as pushing back against the narrative of the freeloading immigrant, which is only supported by cherry-picking what taxes “count” as taxes and ignoring the regressive taxes that you, appropriately, note that most people don’t think of when they say “taxes”.
You could try using a relay somewhere in your process; while I was on a travel gig I had to do some finicky work with a travel router (though this may not work, since you need a VPN for your work, but maybe it’ll give you an idea: https://ideatrash.net/2022/05/howto-secure-and-share-your-internet-on-free-wireless-wifi.html
Also if you have your DNS resolvers manually put in, you may not encounter their portal. Had that problem when on hotel wifi as well.
All that said, I ended up using phone data a lot.