Iraqi exchange student seeks asylum

Almost every morning, 17-year-old Omer Kassim exchanges electronic messages with a mother who loves him and misses him and who fears he will soon come home.

How are you doing? she asks from Baghdad.

There was another bombing but we are OK, she might say.

Will they let you stay? she always asks.

The Iraqi teen asks himself that question, too. Constantly. Omer came to Cleveland Heights a year and a half ago as an exchange student. Now he's seeking to become the region's first Iraq war refugee.

Young men with his first name - a well-known Sunni name that is also spelled as Omar - have been disappearing from his Baghdad neighborhood. Some are turning up dead, beheaded.

When his exchange program ended in June, his parents urged him to stay where he is. And so Omer applied for asylum, or refuge, in America.

"There is no sign anything is getting better back home," he said this week, a trace of bewilderment in his voice.

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