A government-dominated committee has called for seats on inbound flights and places in quarantine to be reserved for skilled migrants.
Their recommendation is unlikely to be well received by the tens of thousands of Australian citizens still stranded overseas.
Coalition committee members have also called for an urgent overhaul of occupations prioritised for skilled migration.
They want engineers, mechanics, cooks, carpenters and electricians given priority.
Hospitality, health, manufacturing and agriculture workers would also be targeted, along with tradespeople.
There are more than 50,000 job vacancies in regional Australia.
The federal government's efforts to incentivise people to relocate to the regions for work has failed.
Its focus is now shifting back to importing workers from overseas.
"We are going to be looking to, obviously, at the first opportunity, bring the skills into the country that we can," Treasurer Josh Frydenberg told reporters on Thursday.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the government was also considering changing arrangements for visa holders already here.
"We are looking at that with a pretty open book," Mr Morrison said.
"It breaks my heart that fruit is getting ploughed back into the ground now. It breaks my heart, and I can only imagine what it means for those producers in those communities."
Mr Morrison said filling regional skill shortages was a "big, big challenge" that he and his most senior ministers were focused on.
"We have seen that there are jobs - even when high rates of unemployment were in place during the pandemic - that Australians have not gone and done," he said.
"That is a challenge which is holding the rest of the economy back, so it's not only impacting on those producers directly, but it's impacting on the broader working of the economy and holding back job creation for Australians in so many other parts of the economy."
Labor committee members published a dissenting report critical of most recommendations on skilled migration.
However, there is some common ground on creating clearer pathways to permanent residency.
"Labor members of the committee support measures that allow greater pathways to permanency for visa holders, noting that the interim report provides no advice on how greater permanency will be achieved by the Morrison government," they wrote.
