Progress Illinois

Environmentalists and comprehensive immigration reform advocates protested outside Chicago's Downtown Hilton where President Barack Obama and other key political leaders attended a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee fundraiser Wednesday evening.

Activists called upon Obama to stop the deportation of undocumented immigrants and reject the Keystone XL Pipeline, among other issues.

Yesenia Najera, 11, a leader of the Albany Park Neighborhood Council, said her father was deported earlier this month.

"It is not fair," she said. "My dad is a good person and will always care for me and my brother and sister."

No other child should have to endure that kind of pain, she said.

Najera had one question for Obama.

"Will you stand for immigration families, and stop all deportation until immigration reform passes," she asked. "Not one more. Not one more."

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It's time for the public to "tap into their anger" and rally against tax loopholes that allow big U.S. corporations to dodge their fair share of American taxes by stashing profits in offshore havens, said leaders from Citizens for Tax Justice and Americans for Tax Fairness.

Congress is currently entertaining a number of tax reform proposals that seek to lower corporate taxes and provide incentives for sending jobs and profit centers offshore, putting billions of tax dollars at stake over a 10-year period, Frank Clemente, campaign manager of Americans for Tax Fairness, said on a conference call with reporters.

The current debate on tax reform comes at a time when corporate profits are at a 60-year high, yet "some of these companies are paying less in taxes than you and I as individuals pay," Clemente said.

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