MONTREAL — “They make rents go up and steal our women.” They “travel in packs of 10 and complain all the time.” “There are too many French people on the Plateau.”

These are some of the lyrics of a song written by Fred Schneider, a 38-year-old advertising copywriter from France, who was belting them out on a recent evening at a thronged bar in Montreal.

The largely Quebecois crowd roared with laughter as the song poked fun at an influx of snobbish, chain-smoking, “know-it-all” French who are “occupying” the Plateau-Mont-Royal neighborhood. The area is so replete with French residents, French bakeries and Parisian accents that it is sometimes referred to sardonically by Montrealers as “Nouvelle-France,” France’s former North American colony.

Mr. Schneider, whose self-mocking performances sometimes include singing while dancing with a baguette, is among the droves of French people who have flocked to Montreal in recent years. They are drawn by a quest to find the American dream in the language of Molière and motivated, in part, by economic doldrums back home.