Does anyone else feel bad for eastern europeans?

This might sound weird, but recently I started feeling really bad for eastern europeans and I was wondering what the general consensus about them was. I recently started uni and I met an eastern european person for the first time (I've seen them around before, but I've never actually interacted with one) and after talking to him for a while I actually felt like he was an alright bloke, but then the more I talked to him I kind of felt bad for him. Like the second I met him and I heard his accent, I realized I have a preconceived notion of eastern europeans are being simple and stupid and the guy obviously isn't - he's in uni, he's definitely smarter than me, he speaks like 4 languages and is generally pretty knowledgable about most things. And the more I talk to him the more I feel for him and it seems like a lot of immigrants in the UK share the same problems as he does.

I mean the guy kind of didn't have a choice, it was either become homeless or go to the UK, now he's making the best of a shitty situation, but at the same time he kind of candidly told me that he doesn't have any friends here and that he's fallen out of contact with his old friends back home, because it's hard to keep a friendship going when you're away for 2-3 years and don't have enough money or the proper situation to go back there. I never really thought about it before tbh, but I met him and a few others and it just really got me thinking.

Am I weird, or does anyone else share this sentiment?