Opposite in my experience... English is my second language, I'm pretty fluent but I just can't understand strong accents.

I quit freelancing for a startup once because I missed half of their French English on meetings. Nowadays we have meetings with Mandarin Chinese and French and while a few of them have good English when others talk I give up.

Meanwhile with the same people native speakers from US and UK have no issues. I am amazed at how they can parse any gibberish thrown at them.