I fully agree - home assistant is the way to go, even if it's a little more complicated.
It's much easier to add / remove / replace hubs as needed. A few years ago I switched my main hub from Alexa to HA. Then, a month or two ago, I decided to move away from Alexa due to the speech to text recognition noticeably degrading, they removed features (I forget what the feature was, it was a while ago), and recent policy changes. Super easy to disconnect and switch to a different assistant like Siri / HomeKit.
It's not just Kilmar, there's been several other reports of international visitors being detained for no reason, like this Canadian who was detained for 12 days. No, I'd rather not chance spending my vacation in jail for no reason, thanks.