Asia is a hot market for Australian universities seeking foreign students. That’s old news. But Latin America? Thanks to American politics and visa policies, a growing number of students from countries like Brazil are traveling nearly halfway around the world for their education, according to a report released today at an international-education conference in Australia.

Many students from Latin America “don’t want to go to the U.S. because they feel alienated by the [Bush] administration,” one of the report’s authors, Allison Doorbar of JWT Education, told The Australian, a newspaper.

About 17,600 Latin American students are enrolled at Australian universities, vocational institutes, and English-language schools, up from 6,900 five years ago. Ms. Doorbar said she and a colleague had interviewed more than 100 of the students. Many, she said, asserted that they had avoided studying in the United States because they were afraid their visa applications would be rejected. They also said they perceived the country as racist.

“There is no doubt that Australia has benefited from what the U.S. has done,” Ms. Doorbar said. —Beth McMurtrie