Why German is less offensive than Spanish

Ruben Navarrette Jr. writes in a newspaper op-ed:

Twenty-three years ago, on the night I graduated from high school, one of my co-valedictorians wrote into his speech a single sentence welcoming his grandparents, who had traveled to the United States to attend the ceremony. The sentence was in his grandparents' native language.

The night before, at the eighth-grade graduation across town, a young girl, another valedictorian, did something similar. She included a single sentence thanking her parents - in their native language - for their support.

The line in the high school speech was in German; the one in the speech for the junior high school was in Spanish. Guess which speech caused a fuss?

I think that there is a big difference. No one is forcing anyone to learn German. Germans come to this country and learn English. They don't complain about they would have controlled part of the USA if only they had won the war.

The law requires my ballots to be printed in English and Spanish. The same law prohibits ballots being printed in German. Speaking Spanish is a threat to Americanism, and speaking German is not.