The US Justice Department said on 4 August 2026 that OpenAI and a company it owns, Statsig, will pay $3.2 million to settle claims they favored foreign workers on temporary visas and discriminated against American job applicants (The Guardian).

The settlement includes $1.2 million in penalties and $2 million in compensation for people who were allegedly harmed. The government accused both companies of breaking the Immigration and Nationality Act, a federal law that says employers cannot treat job applicants differently based on their citizenship status.

The case involved fewer than 10 job openings, according to the Justice Department. The DOJ's settlement agreement points to "a pattern or practice of citizenship status discrimination in five PERM-related job advertisements." PERM is a government process that companies use when they want to sponsor a foreign worker for permanent residency, also known as a green card. Before a company can do that, PERM requires it to show it looked for American workers first and could not find any who were qualified, willing, and available (DOJ Settlement Agreement).

The Justice Department described specific tactics it says the companies used to keep American applicants away. According to the DOJ, OpenAI and Statsig required paper applications instead of letting people apply online, advertised jobs on late-night radio, and refused to post openings on any external website (The Guardian).

OpenAI denied any wrongdoing in the settlement agreement. Even so, the company agreed to change its hiring policies, train its staff, and let the DOJ monitor how it recruits workers going forward.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said the settlement makes sure OpenAI "redresses harm and changes its recruitment practices so US workers receive a fair opportunity for technology positions" (The Guardian).

The case is part of a wider pattern. Over the past year, the Justice Department has announced at least a dozen similar settlements involving claims of discrimination against American workers, mostly by technology companies. None of those earlier cases attracted as much attention, because none involved a company as well-known as OpenAI, the leading name in artificial intelligence.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly said companies take advantage of the temporary work visa system, and he has pushed to make it harder to hire foreign workers. His administration tried to impose a $100,000 fee on new H-1B visas, which are used to hire highly skilled foreign workers. That fee has been blocked in court for now. The OpenAI settlement fits within that broader effort, even though the case was filed under a law about citizenship discrimination rather than a visa rule.

The PERM process is designed to make sure American workers get a fair chance at jobs before a company turns to foreign workers. Think of it as a mandatory want ad: the company has to post the job in places where US workers are likely to see it and apply. When the DOJ says there was discrimination "in PERM-related job advertisements," it means the very steps meant to give Americans a fair shot at the job were set up in a way that discouraged them.

Fewer than 10 positions might seem small compared to a $3.2 million settlement. The Justice Department addressed that gap directly, saying the large amount reflected the harm caused to US workers. In other words, the DOJ appears to be setting penalties based on the company's profile and how serious the conduct was, not just on a head count of affected jobs.

The broader context here is that the government is putting real pressure on the temporary visa system from multiple directions at once. The $100,000 H-1B visa fee is tied up in court, so the DOJ's citizenship-discrimination cases may be the tool that lasts longer. The OpenAI settlement, with its combination of a famous company name and requirements like monitoring and training, could serve as a model for how the department handles the other tech cases it still has pending.