Trump’s DOJ gains oversight of OpenAI’s green-card employee sponsorships — SkimNews
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- OpenAI and once-subsidiary Statsig signed a settlement with the DOJ's Civil Rights Division covering three years of oversight of their PERM-role hiring, paying $3.2 million total—$1.2 million fine plus $2 million set aside as restitution—without admitting wrongdoing
- DOJ investigators alleged fewer than 10 roles involved Immigration and Nationality Act violations, with OpenAI and Statsig accused of not posting positions on public job boards, advertising on late-night radio, and requiring paper-only applications to discourage U.S. citizen applicants
- OpenAI and Statsig must now draft DOJ-approved PERM hiring policies and file semiannual reports detailing how many foreign-worker applications they pursued and how many U.S. citizens they interviewed
- DOJ probes into both companies launched separately in August 2025—before OpenAI acquired Statsig in September 2025—covering five OpenAI cases from 2023 to 2025 and one Statsig case; OpenAI later divested at least part of Statsig in May 2026
- DOJ officials framed the settlement as part of an expanded crackdown on companies gaming the permanent-residence system, noting the Biden-era DOJ reached similar settlements with Facebook and Apple, though those cases alleged widespread and systematic violations rather than the handful of roles at issue here
Why it matters: The settlement locks OpenAI and Statsig into three years of DOJ-supervised PERM hiring with mandatory semiannual disclosure of U.S.-citizen interview counts versus foreign-worker applications—a transparency regime that fits a broader pattern, since the DOJ notes it reached comparable settlements with Facebook and Apple during the Biden administration over the same statute.
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