 As of 2017, the majority of illegal immigrants are not Mexicans, with the percentage of illegal immigrants that are Mexican steadily declining over recent years .The number of Mexican legal and illegal immigrants in the United States grew quite rapidly over the 35 years between 1970 and 2004; increasing almost 15-fold from about 760,000 in the 1970 Census to more than 11 million in 2004—an average annual growth rate of more than 8 percent, maintained over more than three decades.On average the net Mexican population, both documented and illegal, living in the United States has grown by about 500,000 per year from 1995 to 2005 with 80 to 85 percent of the growth attributed to unauthorized immigration.