Failing to smell the coffee

Subject: Failing to smell the coffee.

How are we to cope with the phenomena of mass migration. How can we cope with the arrival of thousands of men women and children who come from backgrounds and cultures so far removed from our own.

As Turkey loosens it's grip on the migrants who fled Syria and Afghanistan and these migrants pick up their belongings and flood to the Turkish / Greek boarder in their thousands, potentially hundreds of thousands, how do we in the West react to this invasion from the East.
Invasions, (the take over of sovereign land) are usually the result of war, the victorious army dictating the conditions, the defeated, subordinate and cowed and whilst the wars in Afghanistan and Syria are the impetus behind the exodus from those countries, also mixed up in this one way flow of people are the 'economic migrants' from Africa as well as those parts of the world where poverty is symptomatic.
How do we judge who we should let in or keep out. How do we fit our principles of being an open non racist country with our concern of the effect that a colonisation by people who do not necessarily share our values will have over the long term. Our traditional way of life has changed for ever in many of our cities and we make the assumption that the change is for the better because to do otherwise would be to admit failure in past decisions.
I travel each day to my appointment with the machine which is zapping my cancer cells (along no doubt with the healthy cells close by) in a taxi driven by an Afghan man. We have struck up a friendship as we discuss the world problems particularly those in his own country and as a Muslim, his life in this country. He has a 4 year old daughter who he idolises and his descriptions of family life make him a role model of a man trying to do his best for his family. He and his family are possibly indicative of the ones you see on the dusty road or in the camps waiting for news as they try to leave the iniquity of war or economic no hope for the streets paved with gold in Europe.
His own baggage seems to have been assimilated into a sort of Anglo/Afghan way of life. The Mosque and the tradition of speaking Dari at home whilst, to all intents and purposes he assimilates to being just another hybrid of the British multicultural,
multiethnic society we have attempted to create.
I enjoy his company and his politics and yet if I met him on the street I would assume him to be foreign to my way of thinking. Is it the case that we all have more in common with each other than we are prepared to accept. Is our prejudice the stone we wear around our necks, holding us back by failing to allow us to look up and smell the coffee.