... but you still need to import!

That's correct — in case you actually want to import anything (or need to pass whatever parameters to the module's import method; or the module insists on having its import method called for some other reason).  OTOH, with many modules (especially OO-style ones) there's no need to import stuff, so there's a good chance you'd get away without calling import...  (I figured the OP would come back in case of problems :)