Immigrants in Montreal

In 2011, Montreal (CMA) was home to the third largest immigrant population in Canada.

In 2011, a total of 846,645 immigrants accounted for 23% of Montreal’s population, and they represented 11% of Quebec’s population.

In 2011, Haitians, Italians and French were the largest groups of Montreal’s foreign-born population. Other top source countries of immigration were Morocco, Algeria, China, Lebanon, Viet Nam, Romania, the Philippines, Greece, United States, India, Egypt and Portugal. All together represented 57.5% of the immigrant population in Montreal.

Colombia, Mexico, Sri Lanka, UK and Iran were also in the top 20 sources of immigration to Montreal.

In Montreal, the immigrant population grew 36% from 621,890 in 2001 to 846,645 in 2011.

From 2001 to 2011, immigrants from the top countries in Montreal that experienced the highest increases were Algeria (187%), Morocco (133%), Romania (81%), China (75%) and the Philippines (65%). In contrast, the number of immigrants from Italy and Portugal decreased (-17% each) as well as Greece (-7%).

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, Montreal was the destination of choice for 456,966 new permanent residents.