Every student, or friend of mine, that I've talked to in China, Korea and Taiwan have told me they aren't applying to US universities for any number of reasons:
1) Too expensive 2) Crime / Danger ( debatable here, but the school shootings in the past few years hasn't helped ) 3) Racism
Out of the three, fear of racism was the least mentioned. The biggest reason was cost. Crime fear of major crime was also mentioned in most conversations I've had.
In the past I've always tried to downplay the danger / gun violence, but nowadays I don't even bother. Unless they want to go to MIT or Harvard, I really don't think there's much value in the 4-year degree in the US when you consider the cost ( and international students almost always pay more unless they get scholarships ).