Edward N. Pamir has no tie to British Columbia. He traveled to Vancouver in January to attend his father’s funeral.

Now, Mr. Pamir finds himself stuck in this picturesque Canadian seaport, a prisoner of long-ago missteps. Or maybe a clerical error. Or maybe just bad luck in an age of yellow threat-level suspicions.

He went to school in St. Joseph, married a woman with local roots, bought a house, held a job in the South Side for nearly the past 20 years. Planning for the future, he had a 401(k) account.

An American life.

Another American, this one staffing a border crossing between Vancouver and Seattle, had a different view. As the St. Joseph man tried to return to the United States after his father’s funeral, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer denied him entry.

In the eyes of the federal government, Mr. Pamir is not a legal resident of the United States.

This news began a nightmare that continues for Mr. Pamir. He remains a displaced soul in a country where he holds resident status but no personal connection. He believed himself an American citizen after going through the Ronald Reagan-initiated immigration amnesty program in 1986 but can produce no documents to prove his claim.

Worse, his wife died during his exile, a loss Mr. Pamir can’t put behind him because of not being able to return to St. Joseph.

He knocks around his late father’s apartment pondering regrets, most of them about ever leaving the United States. Would a person in doubt of his legal residency cross the border? The question comes rhetorically, Mr. Pamir knowing the answer carries no weight in the bureaucratic mess where he finds himself.

His phone calls from Canada offer a revolving tone of anger, despair, doubt, frustration and resignation.

“All I want to do is go home,” he says.

“EVERYBODY WENT CRAZY”

Edward Pamir was born 42 years ago in Campbellton, New Brunswick, the son of a doctor born in Turkey. In 1972, his parents moved him and his brother to the United States. Mr. Pamir would be a teenager before learning his pre-school entry into the United States was illegal.

After living for a time in the American Northeast, Mr. Pamir’s family came to St. Joseph when his father, Dr. Polon Pamir, applied for a job at the State Hospital. For the next 30 years, Northwest Missouri would be Edward’s home.

About 1990, he took a job with Ag Processing in St. Joseph. He married Debra A. Havner in June 1993, and they lived in St. Joseph.

Edward’s father died on Jan. 18 in Vancouver. Edward went to Canada for the funeral, flying to Seattle on Jan. 21 and driving the 140 miles north to Vancouver.

The return trip presented a problem. With U.S. soil in sight at the border crossing, officers detained Mr. Pamir for what he said was seven hours.

“Everybody went crazy,” Mr. Pamir remembered of the incident. “They treated us like we were terrorists.”

After that, he said, “They basically told me my status to work in the United States was revoked in 1992.”

Uncertain of his legal status in the United States, Mr. Pamir had filed paperwork in 1986 through the Immigration Reform and Control Act, whose amnesty provision legalized, by some estimates, 2.7 million undocumented workers.

If the federal government ever granted him residency status through that effort, it went away. An officer at the border suggested a clerical error might be at fault, Mr. Pamir said. The St. Joseph man said he never received notice of anything awry.

“Since he never received a letter from immigration, he continued to live his life,” said his sister, Susan Rogers, of Glen Allen, Va.

Ms. Rogers drove Mr. Pamir back to Vancouver, there to figure out the next step.

At the American consulate in that city, Mr. Pamir accepted a suggestion to get a Canadian birth certificate and try to cross the border as a visitor. Then, he could work to straighten out his problems from the American side.

A bad suggestion, it turned out. On Feb. 17, officers at the border took a dim view of this plan, Mr. Pamir said, denying him entry for five years.

The man retreated to Vancouver, contacted an immigration attorney suggested by his company and waited.

NOT A CARD, A STATUS

Those native to the United States have no real appreciation for the complexity of immigration laws. The bureaucracy alone is daunting.

The Department of State issues visas. Citizenship and Immigration Services adjudicates immigrant benefits. Customs and Border Protection watches the points of entry, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement detains and deports status violators.

Those going through the amnesty program of 1986 got permanent legal residence if they met all the requirements, though such a status can be revoked. People with that status can file for American citizenship after five years, though nothing compels that.

“There are people who live in this country as permanent residents their entire lives, and they have no problem with their green card coming in and out of the country,” said Mary Lou Cabrera, a spokeswoman for Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Neither Ms. Cabrera nor Carl Rusnok, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman, would speak to the specifics of the Pamir case. However, Mr. Rusnok said anyone who successfully completed the amnesty program would have gotten a green card designating legal residence.

“Permanent residence is not just a card, it’s a status,” he said from his office in Dallas. “If the card expires, you still have the status.”

Kevin L. Jamison, a Gladstone, Mo., attorney, handles immigration cases. While he knows nothing of the Pamir matter, he finds it plausible a clerical mistake might have led to the man’s predicament.

“I remember the amnesty program,” he said. “It was utter chaos.”

However, a green card cures many ills, the lawyer said, and even a lost card should be recoverable through certain steps. Mr. Jamison added though, “If he never got the card, then he’s got problems.”

David Brown, with Brown Immigration Law in Lincoln, Neb., represents Mr. Pamir. He has filed a Freedom of Information Act request to piece together what amnesty documents his client filed more than two decades ago.

“It’s hard to know which lever to push until you know what was done and what the mistake is you’re trying to correct,” Mr. Brown said.

The law turns unfavorable for a person outside the country who never had permanent legal residence status, Ms. Cabrera said.

“That opportunity doesn’t exist right now,” she said from the Chicago regional office. “There is no amnesty. There isn’t any way that someone that’s here unlawfully can change their status.”

“I’M JUST NUMB”

On Jan. 31, Debra Pamir died at age 48. Her husband could not make it back to St. Joseph to attend to the arrangements, which his mother-in-law handled.

“I didn’t get to say goodbye to my wife,” he said from Vancouver. “It’s doesn’t seem real to me. I’m just numb.”

Mr. Pamir trained for, then quit, a low-paying job at the Vancouver airport. His job remains open in St. Joseph, and he rents his St. Joseph house at 1712 S. 10th St. The days in Canada drag on, and it takes a toll on him and his family.

“Losing my dad, losing his wife, now I feel like I’ve lost my brother,” Ms. Rogers said.

Mr. Brown calls the process “in a holding pattern” until he can gather more information.

“This is definitely the first time I’ve had this kind of weird situation,” the attorney said, noting a post 9/11 urgency in all immigration matters. “There is less flexibility in the system when something goes wrong.”

As for Mr. Pamir, he just yearns to see St. Joseph.

“I’m just trying to get home to everything I own and everything I know,” he said.

Ken Newton can be reached

at kenn@npgco.com.