The article analyzes, through the lens of linguistics, psychological problems faced by migrants trying to adapt in contemporary Russian society. The authors consider the “pain points” of people's language disunity from the standpoint of the anthropological approach to ethnolinguistics and make a hypothesis that it is language that is the main problem of migrants' adaptation and one of the main reasons for the polarization of society that divides it into two camps on the “friend or foe” principle. Most of the focus is on the following problems: (1) language and migrants' adaptation in Russian society;language and school education; (3) language and culture; (4) language and criminal groups; (4) language and “New-Russian vocabulary” as a marker of attitudes towards migrants in Russia; and (5) language and Russians and migrants' mutual perception. The authors drew up a questionnaire to identify students' attitude towards migrants and determine the degree of their tolerance. Based on the results of the questionnaire survey and the previous analysis, diagrams were drawn to show how Russians and migrants perceive each other in substantiation of the original hypothesis. In conclusion, some educational initiatives are put forward concerning language policy in a multinational society.