This is indeed all hard to believe when the direct environment and what one can see with ones own eyes does not match the news (may that be the opposite sources). For my own city I can tell that since we moved to the outer skirt - apart from the center and more wealthy areas - I'd say the foreign population in this part of town is about 80 percent. I sometimes feel like a foreigner myself. Though I need to tell that there can not be seen open crime and no gangs stealing or threatening. I don't know, maybe I am too isolated.
I do not share the fear of foreign peoples, we are since the last war a country of immigrants. My stance on it is that if a culture gives up on its own values and traditions it will leave not much trace of itself in the long run. We are in this run, I suppose.
Since I grew up with a certain amount of tradition, I have the direct comparison between city life and village life. The citizens have not much culture on their own. They don't care and I must admit that I did not care myself. Material prosperity and wealth makes those meaningful rituals and traditions obsolete. All went and still goes to commerce. It is sad, though. Only now, as I became an old person, I see things more clearly.
I now understand my mother much better, since they had the much greater culture shock as Germans who emigrated into Ukraine a long time ago, but were forced to flee and then were imprisoned and then went back to their former home land in the early 70s. Just to find it in such change that it was unbelievable for them. So they stuck to their own (Russian Germans) and Christianity.
Just to add some thoughts in here.