Your application is 5 months in the waiting, there is no particular need to worry right now.
But to answer your question, the response ranges from persons who will stay on the case, to persons who will go online and print out the FBIs testimony to congress that is 4 years old (this is from persobnal experience).
I think the best thing that happens is that if someone left your case on a desk to gather dust, a request from a member of congress will force the file to be picked up and hopefully placed in queue to be acted upon. I was waiting for my name check to be done for 18 months, it was only when I contacted my congressman that I recieved a letter saying I need to go for another FP. It is obvious that the congress man did not force them to complete the name check, which leaves only one scenerio. This is that the name check came back but no one acted on it.
One other thing (from someone experience). An applicant had changed his address and recieved confirmation at the new address. However, USCIS still sent a request for evidence and subsequently notice of cancellation to the old address. it was only after contacting the congress person did the applicant discover what was going on.
Oh, i didnt' look at their timeline to see that its' only been five months.
Five months is no time at all. You are worrying too quickly.
I have been waiting for almost 15 months. I tried calling and InfoPass, even my attorney tried. We are getting the same answer, it's out of the queue in a no processing pile. An IO said my clearance was done quickly over a year ago and see no reason as why mine is on the no process pile.
I called again today to see if they were moving on my file. And the representative was a jerk. She told me that I'm not even in my District that my file is in some other district and the IO at InfoPass could not give me correct information as it was not my district.
They jsut don't want me to have my application accepted.
I'm writing to our Senator thsi week
My observation is that if you do not receive IL within 2 months of FP, you are likely to have NC issues. Right now the processing speed is really fast IF you do not have name check issues, as you observed in other thread.
The bottle neck is now with FBI name check. Their goal is to clear NC pending for more than six months by 02/2009.
I suggest you to schedule an INFOPASS to find out but do not expect they will tell you when it is going to be done. That's a million dollar question.