Chinese Lining Up in Record Numbers to Visit the U.S. HONG KONG - Chinese tourists apparently can't wait to get to the United States. Brazilians and Mexicans, too. The State Department has announced that it has already processed more than 1 million visas in China this year, a 43 percent increase over the first six months of fiscal 2011. Since 2004, according to the Commerce Department, the number of visitors from China has increased 438 percent. Dong Xue, a senior at Purdue University in Indiana, told the state-run China Daily newspaper that she recently got her visa to return to Purdue in just five days, using a drop-off service at a bank in China. As a frequent visitor, she said, she did not have to appear at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing or a consulate for a personal interview. U.S. consular offices in Mexico also process more than 1 million visa applications each year, the State Department said, and Brazil is soon likely to become the third such nation. Visa applications this year are up 44 percent in Brazil. Mexico has shown a 36 percent increase. Of the top 20 countries sending tourists to the United States, only Britain, Spain and Ireland have shown decreases so far this year. The White House said the increasing number of tourists is due in part to the Travel Promotion Act, which passed in 2010. It established a tourism marketing and promotional fund, financed through a $10 fee on each new visa. But the U.S. share of the global travel market has been slipping in the past decade, to 11.2 percent in 2010 from 17.3 percent in 2000, as Harriet Edleson recently reported in The New York Times. After Sept. 11, the perception formed around the world that America was not as welcoming as it once was, that there was difficulty in accessing the visa, and the entry process through customs was inefficient," Geoff Freeman, the chief operations officer of the U.S. Travel Association, told Harriet. "Interest in America is high and has largely remained high but there has been the perception that 'America isn't interested in me so I won't go,' " Mr. Freeman said. " 'Go away' was the message we were sending. About 1.2 million mainland Chinese visited the United States last year, according to Chinese government statistics cited by China Daily. The number is expected to reach 2 million by 2015. The main purpose of Chinese visits to the United States in 2001, according to the Commerce Department, were for business (30 percent of the total), vacation (27 percent), visiting relatives (24 percent) and study (3 percent). At the start of 2012, more than 850,000 foreign students were actively enrolled at over 10,000 schools in the United States, federal statistics show. Student visas have increasingly become a security concern, especially when foreign students are bound for aviation schools, as my colleague Michael Schmidt reports: More than one-third of the flight schools in the United States that cater to foreigners are not certified by the Federal Aviation Administration, according to the Government Accountability Office, raising concerns that the schools are illegally backing student visas although they have no intention of teaching the students to fly. The G.A.O. report, which was released Tuesday, said most of the flight schools it inspected at random were unable to provide proper documentation, "such as proof of school officials' citizenship or permanent residency." The agency began its investigation of flight schools at the request of three senators after a school in California had "provided foreigners with paperwork for student visas, with no intention of educating them," Michael writes. A statement on Tuesday by Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said: The report shows that more than a decade after the 9/11 attacks, the student visa program remains dangerously vulnerable to terrorists. These sham schools are providing a dangerous backdoor entrance to the United States. The bogus school in California exposed last year was really just the tip of the iceberg. Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi - two of the hijackers involved in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 - received visas and attended a flight school in Florida.