Seeing from comments in this post this seems to be a very common approach/story. It sounds super wrong though. Why should a letter from (the office of) a congre

Seeing from comments in this post this seems to be a very common approach/story. It sounds super wrong though. Why should a letter from (the office of) a congressman make such a difference all of a sudden, while the facts regarding the matter hasn't changed at all? In any society priding itself on the rule of law, this sort of process shouldn't make a difference at all, and it sounds an awful lot like personal favor currying both on the side of the congressman and on the government agency that responded to such a letter. So whoever contacted a congressman would suddenly get an edge over whoever that just stays put, while the agency could/should have done its job with the same standard for everybody. Doesn't make logical sense.