I am in Dallas. I contacted congressman Pete Session's office. His INS contact person was very helpful, although she was a little bit hesitate to contact INS at the beginning. I started conact with Pete Session's office in Nov. 2003. At that time, my waiting time exceeded 1000 days. She helped me to get the second finger print notices for both my wife and myself. We got our finger prints done in the first week of January in 2004. After that, that contact person asked me to wait for a month to let texas center process our finger prints. As most people on this forum know, TSC did no thing to our cases in January. I contacted her again in the middle of Feburary and she made contact again to TSC. Ten days later on March 2, 2004, our cases were finally approved. I really believe she helped to push my case. During my whole waiting period before Jan 2004, I only received one finger print notice from TSC shortly after filing 485. My status was nevered changed during the waiting period even after the second finger prints were taken.
I also contacted Senator Hutchison's office in Nov. 2003. Her office was extremely slow. When I contacted them again in Jan 2004, they told me they just put my case in their computers and had no idea when my case would be picked up by any staff to contact TSC.
In my opinion, contacting TSC directly is useless. I opened one inquiry after my waiting time exceeded 1000 days ( before 1000 days, TSC won't even allow you to open an inquiry). I received a response after 3 weeks. On that response, it still printed the same crap -- " we are still processing your case, blah , blah, it will take 900 to 999 days, blah, blah".
BTW, I forgot to mention, usually congressman or senator won't take your case if your 485 filing time is still later than official processing time. However if your filing time passes official time, those office will be very helpful. They usually have dedicated personnel to handle immigration cases and they have hotlines to the center. INS also has dedicated internal staff with job title "congressional liaison" (something like that) to deal with cases raised by those offices.
The following is some of my detail.
Priority date: Oct ??, 1999 (RIR, EB2, China)
I-140: July ???, 2000
I-485: ND 2/8/2001
First FP: 5/?/2001
Second FR: 1/5/2004
Approved: 3/2/2004