>>>>There are many jokes about this "misconception" :) We were told we were Jews in Russia. We are told we are Russians in America. Even in Israel, Russian Jews are called Russians. So, ironically, if we want to maintain our ethnic background, we have to live in Russia/Ukraine :)
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>>>If it may make it easier to you, I was frequently thought to be a Russian while in the US.
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>>>At least, nobody here tried to call me an American... more than once.
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>>I think because we all have an eastern European accent. Americans spot me pretty quickly. My wife came here (to the USA) as a teen; so she has a subtle accent that not easily identified. In fact, the southerners (American) think she is Yankee :). But accent, as I am sure you know, is not a problem in the USA. When we are in NYC, we think we are in some foreign country :) (hear more foreign language than English).
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>Early on, after perhaps just a few months there, I asked a coworker do I have much of an accent. He said "no, no accent at all... it's that you make breaks at weird places in a sentence". That happens when I search for the best word to use, because very often the first word which comes to mind is ambiguous, so it takes some time to find the best substitute (first I wanted to write "replacement" but that could be taken as replacement part for something that was broken, so, next...).

Many years ago I read a book about foreign accents. One thing I remember (which is more than I remember from many other books :)) is that the intonation (and another thing which I don't remember) makes us recognize a person not native to the language.