Immigrants in Edmonton

In 2011, Edmonton had the sixth largest immigrant population after Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary and Ottawa-Gatineau (CMAs).

In 2011, 232,195 immigrants accounted for 20.4% of Edmonton’s population, and they represented 6.5%of Alberta’s population.




In 2011, Filipino, Indian and Chinese were the largest immigrant groups in Edmonton. Other top immigration countries were the United Kingdom, Viet Nam, United States, Germany, Poland, Hong Kong, Pakistan, Netherlands, Lebanon, Italy, Ukraine and South Korea. All together represented 64% of Edmonton’s immigrant population.

Somalia, El Salvador, Fiji, Ethiopia and Portugal were also in the top sources of immigration to Edmonton.

In Edmonton, the immigrant population grew 40.5% from 165,235 in 2001 to 232,195 in 2011.

From 2001 to 2011, in Edmonton (CMA), the number of immigrants (from the top ten countries) experienced the highest increases: Pakistan (239%), Philippines (157%), India (126%) and South Korea (84%). In contrast, the highest decreases were observed among immigrants from the Netherlands (-20%), Poland (-18%) and the United Kingdom (-14%).

Note:

We would like to point out that we used data from the National Household Survey (NHS) knowing that its quality is still under criticism because this survey was conducted on a voluntary basis, so its validity, reliability and comparability with other instruments, such as population censuses, have become an issue. In fact, before the first release of the NHS results, Statistics Canada issued warnings and cautions when using the NHS data, so use this data cautiously.

From 2005 to 2015, Edmonton was the destination of choice for 113,536 new permanent residents.