As the political flap over compromise immigration legislation demonstrated, we are a long way from resolving our border security and immigration policy debate — and the legislative debate has only scratched the surface for the wider public debate, which is yet to come.

And — xenophobic as we traditionally are — we have yet to examine how similar choices, some made more than a century ago, have affected British and European societies. In fact, we seem destined to repeat the mistakes they made.

For example, for 100 years or more, the British allowed free travel and immigration from all parts of the British Empire to mother England. Even later, when the British Empire gave way to the United Kingdom, and former Empire colonies were given their independence, these policies persisted.

The result was an England overwhelmed by immigration from India and Pakistan, especially in the ’60s. Despite acrimonious debate, the policies persisted, forever changing the demographics of mother England.

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Yet, I was in London when this debate was raging between Liberals and Conservatives in the 1960s — and these points were made over and over again to the British public.

Yet, despite this, and despite the intervention of years of Conservative Maggie Thatcher, the Brits set the stage for all the bombings that have occurred and that will continue to occur there.

They still don’t understand that these “new” immigrants hate them, have always hated them and will always hate them.

To my British friends I say, “Look, it’s no different than the Irish hating you, and it will take at least as long, if not longer, to resolve — if it ever is resolved, and it may never be.”

Then, there was the German “gast artbiter” (guest worker) program in the 1970s — guest workers came primarily from Turkey under a limited entitlement to work in German factories, to allow Germany to recover from the shortage of male workers caused by millions of deaths during World War II.

The gast arbiter program was also hugely controversial; nevertheless it persisted, having enormous effects on German society.

In fact, compared with the societal problems caused by the reunification of East and West Germany at the end of the Cold War, the guest worker program has persisted as the most difficult social problem in Germany, drastically affecting schools, social programs and every phase of life in Germany.

To be fair, the Germans treated and continue to treat guest workers as second-class citizens, and this is one reason for the continuing tension.

Even with pressures to eliminate the “class system,” however, there remain huge ghettos of Turks in German cities, and very bad feelings between the two groups persist. Simply, they hate each other.

France? Well, the French have this refreshing way of looking at things around them and saying, “This is not right,” as if it somehow just happened, and they are now reacting this way despite allowing thousands of people from former colonies to immigrate for the last 50 years.

And, just like the Brits and Germans, a lot of the people whom the French have been allowing to immigrate hate them and will always hate them, no matter what social programs are implemented to address discrimination.

But this is running headlong into traditional French civil liberties; the French are legally prohibited, for example, to allow religious dress and regalia in schools and the workplace.

This issue is simply not legally resolvable for the French and will continue to be the underlying reason behind widespread public violence.

Now, what can we learn from this? Well, nothing so far, but what about the near future? Can we stop ourselves from creating a legal environment that entitles immigrants, even illegal ones, from tying us in knots for the next 100 years?

Daniel Gallington is a senior fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies in Arlington.