Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday sought to calm frayed nerves on the contentious visa issue, saying the number of H-1B visas for Indian IT professionals would not come down. She asked the industry not to get panicky. “No need to get panicky on the visa front. The lottery process is something I suppose they (the US) wanted to do a correction on. The numbers are not something they are changing. The numbers will not come down,” Sitharaman told reporters here. Over the past few weeks, there is a growing sentiment of protectionism across various developed economies, including the US, seeking to safeguard jobs for locals and raise the bar for foreign workers. In the US, the Trump administration wants to replace the current lottery system with a more merit-based immigration policy.