Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke will speak at the National Press Club on Thursday, more than a month after his initial appearance at the venue was cancelled at the last minute, with disagreement within cabinet about the changes.
The announcement is expected to detail how Labor will reduce net overseas migration from about 300,000 in 2025 to 245,000 in 2026/27 and 225,000 per year thereafter.
"We do need to get net overseas migration down," Mr Burke said during Question Time on Wednesday.
"We need to make sure that we deal with the numbers overall, and do so in a sensible, targeted way that provides the easiest pathway through for the Australian economy."
The government has not previously targeted a set figure for net migration.
But Labor has overshot its forecasts in successive budgets as a surge in visa hopping and vexatious asylum applications clogged the migration system.
The rise in popularity of One Nation, which announced its own migration plan on Monday, has ramped up pressure on Mr Burke to bring down the migrant intake.
While Labor has been working on a more comprehensive shake-up, Mr Burke has quietly tweaked visa processing settings and appeals processes through ministerial directives to massage the net migration figure without the need for legislation.
Negotiations between the government and the coalition on a comprehensive legislative package broke down in recent days, leaving him to settle for more regulatory tweaks.
"A whole lot of our immigration system simply functions by virtue of applications being made, and processing speeds is one of the only things with planning levels that we currently have available," Mr Burke said.
"The more tools that are available, the better we can target the system. The best form of outcome there will be if we are able to sort our way through for a legislative option.
"In the absence of that, there are still more levers that the government will be able to use and I'll be making those announcements tomorrow."
Labor's use of those ministerial levers has sparked a backlash from employers.
Farmers say a processing freeze for working holiday visas has left them short of staff during harvesting season.
A slowdown on offshore applications for skilled migrants has put pressure on construction firms trying to find labourers to build new homes, Housing Industry Association managing director Jocelyn Martin said.
"What we're after is a transparent system that can be relied on, and that is consistent, and that is suitable for the construction industry," she told reporters.
"A very small portion of skilled migration visas are issued to construction workers at the moment, and I think it's important that we delve deeper into why that might be, and what are the barriers to that."
One Nation's migration plan would leave the existing intake of working holiday visas unchanged, but slashes net overseas migration temporarily into negative territory before settling at 130,000 per year.
The coalition is working on a plan to tie net overseas migration to the amount of new homes built, currently about 173,000 per year.
Opposition defence spokesman James Paterson said he was sceptical about Labor's ability to deliver its migration plan.
"As for our own policy, we are close to releasing it, but we're actually going to do the work to get it right because we are not the government," he told reporters in Canberra.
"We're not going to put out a half-baked policy like One Nation has that hasn't even been costed, the budgetary impacts of which they have no idea."
Mr Burke's office did not respond to a request for comment.
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