Home of the Biosphere!
Now, this is a little different from the other Canadian cities in terms of immigration because Quebec runs its own immigration scheme within the larger Canadian one; if you want to move to Quebec, you better speak French and/or (probably and) have a job--or you need to have lived in the rest of Canada long enough to have a legal right to relocate to Quebec.
But let us assume you clear that high bar, or are a dual Canadian citizen, or somesuch. What urbanist advantages does Montreal present?
1. Building Rail
Montreal is remarkable within the North American context for actually building a lot of rail fairly quickly right now: not on the legacy metro, but on a new system call the REM (Réseau express métropolitain, a very similar term to Paris's RER aka Réseau express régional). Unlike the RER, which is heavy rail, the REM is light rail. And it's a bit more urban and less regional (one might even say...métropolitain instead of régional...). But the central premise that the city is becoming easier to transit quickly, and without a car, is a big urbanist plus. It opens up areas of the city that were harder to get to and navigate and brings some TOD with it.
This is particularly good if you're moving to the city, as it disrupts some of the entrenched costs and flow of the existing city which (say it with me) is having something of a housing crisis just like every other city we've looked at.
And of course, the existing metro isn't bad either (including but not limited to its very nice public art):
I really dig these dodecahedrons.
2. Other Urbanist Innovation
The YouTube channel Oh the Urbanity is based in Montreal, so I'll just gesture here towards a lot of their thoughts on this: Montreal is not just building rail, it's also building bike lanes and intelligent modal filters, while filling in missing middle housing.
In other words, Montreal is actively becoming a more pleasant place to live, especially if you don't have a car, and especially if you would like to be able to live in a walkable, bikeable community.
And one with nice cultural amenities like this art museum:
As with the REM, the other great element for immigrants here is that not all of this is happening in the most expensive central zones. You can legitimately move here and possibly get access to these benefits.
As well as very nice corndogs (aka pogo) at a giant orange ball.
3. Bilingual Bagels
Montreal is also just a good city for immigrants itself, expansions aside. It's part of Quebec, and as you might imagine (or know from the above point about immigration law) that means there's a strong emphasis on French in the community, and it's officially bilingual in the opposite way that Ontario and Vancouver are: French as default, and English as an afterthought, rather than the reverse.
As at this board game (excuse me, jeux de societé) café.
But unlike what we might call up-province Quebec, by analogy with upstate New York, Montreal has a thriving Anglophone community as well and other languages too.
And that linguistic mélange is mirrored in other cultural mixing as well. The bagels in this section title are a Jewish legacy for the city (even my own family appears to have briefly come through Montreal on their way to the US as Jewish immigrants) and Montreal bagels are so, so good. They aren't just a symbol of a multicultural food scene, though they are just the tip of that iceberg. They also speak to the nightlife, even if they aren't sites for drinking and dancing: the bagel bakeries are open very, very late, which is also a typical element of the Montreal environment.
The best bagels possibly in the world.
Montreal is a great city to live in, and one that folds immigrant populations into a vibrant social mix--as long as Quebec will let you immigrate.
Walkable, bikeable (even in the winter), gorgeous (as in the above picture of le village); Montreal definitely deserves to be on a list of excellent places to immigrate to, if you can.
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