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OpenAI has agreed to a $3.2 million settlement with the Justice Department over allegations it discriminated against US workers by steering jobs toward temporary visa holders.
Getting into it: This all traces back to a process called PERM. If a company wants to sponsor a foreign employee for a green card, the law says it has to try to hire an American for that job first. It has to advertise the position, take applications, and only move forward with the foreign worker if no qualified US candidate turns up.
The DOJ says OpenAI and its subsidiary Statsig treated that step as a joke. The company posted its regular job openings on its public careers page, but kept the PERM listings off it entirely. It accepted online applications for regular jobs, but required anyone applying to a PERM position to print a resume and mail it in on paper. It ran some of those PERM openings on late-night radio. The effect, investigators found, was that Americans never had a real shot at those jobs, which cleared the way to sponsor the foreign workers the company already had in mind.
In a statement, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon said, “It is illegal to discriminate against U.S. workers by preferring temporary visa holders for jobs. This substantial settlement ensures that OpenAI redresses harm and changes its recruitment practices so that U.S. workers receive a fair opportunity for highly sought-after technology positions.”
OpenAI will pay $1.2 million in civil penalties and set aside $2 million in back pay for anyone the DOJ determines was harmed. It also has to post PERM roles publicly, accept electronic applications, retrain staff, revise policies, and submit to three years of federal monitoring, including semiannual reports on how many foreign sponsorship applications it filed and how many US citizens it interviewed.
OpenAI admits no wrongdoing under the settlement. The company said in its own statement, “While we disagree with the DOJ’s findings, we reached this agreement to resolve the matter and move forward with our PERM program, which is critical for employees and candidates requiring immigration support.”
This is the 13th settlement since the DOJ relaunched its Protecting US Workers Initiative in 2025, and it lands amid a broader fight over H-1B visas in tech, where companies argue they need global talent and critics say the immigration pipeline is being used to bypass American applicants.
