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Heightened security after the September 11 terrorist attacks has made it harder for Latin American students to get visas to study in the United States, but U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings is visiting Chile and Brazil this week in an attempt to woo them back.
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U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings visits Chilean Foreign Minister Alejandro Foxley in Santiago.

The United States wants "Chilean students to know that American higher education is open for business to students from our neighbors," Spellings told reporters Monday in Santiago, Chile. She travels next to Sao Paulo, where she's expected to repeat that message.

Across the region and around the world, students seeking to head to the U.S. for everything from English lessons to postgraduate courses have been caught up for years in the fallout of extra visa security precautions.

Though enrollments at American universities for international students are rebounding, the number of F-1 student visas granted to students seeking to study for a year or more is still below the number of those issued before the terrorist attacks.

And competition for students is growing fast from nations such as Australia, Canada, France and the United Kingdom, which have launched intense marketing campaigns to attract South America's best and brightest.

Brazil is traditionally eclipsed by countries such as India and China in terms of the number of students it sends to the United States. But the drop-off in student visas for Latin America's largest nation after the attacks was severe and could take years to reverse, even as more Brazilians are heading to college.

"If they got rid of the visa difficulties, I think most Brazilian students would choose the United States," said Leticia Amorim, a 22-year-old business administration major who will travel soon to Texas or New York to study.

Many of her friends contemplating study abroad are still concerned about U.S. visa requirements, she said, and some worry that they might not be well received. The U.S. visa process is still viewed as cumbersome and is the main reason Brazilians are increasingly opting for other countries, she said.

American universities depend on foreign students for teaching and research help, and policymakers consider them essential for future foreign leaders to be familiar with the United States.

Both groups were alarmed by the slackening interest among international students in studying in the United States -- a trend blamed on anti-American sentiment, difficulties getting visas after the attacks and growing competition. It also has an economic effect: International students provide billions of dollars annually to the U.S. economy.

Only 5,881 F-1 student visas were handed out in Brazil in 2006, the latest year for which figures are available, down from 12,325 in 2001, according to the U.S. Embassy in Brasilia.

The number of J-1 visas granted to Brazilians doing exchanges or course work involving less than a year's study more than doubled during the same period to 17,240 last year, but those visas are also used by people involved in business, professional and government exchanges.

Education experts credit U.S. officials for shortening turnaround time for visa applications, and Spellings said Monday that the trend of falling international enrollment has been reversed.

"We have started to regain ground that had been lost after September 11," she said.

The U.S. Education Department said the number of student and exchange program visas hit an all-time high of 591,050 in 2006. But the number of F-1 student visa granted in 2006 was 273,870, below the high of 293,357 in 2001.

Spellings' visit follows a similar trip she made in November to Asia, and Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Karen Hughes made the same rounds in India in March. Accompanying Spellings on her tour to Chile and Brazil through Friday is a contingent of seven university leaders.

"It's true that the U.K., Canada and Australia are aggressively marketing and increasing their percentages of international students, but they don't have the capacity to take the millions the United States can take," said Peggy Blumenthal, executive vice president of the New York-based Institute of International Education.

"The problem is getting the word out to the people that the situation has changed," she said, "and making them believe it."