The reason I filed #35791 is that I'm rewriting modulegraph[1] using importlib and run into some problems due to importlib.util.find_spec() failing for names that are already imported. 

Working around that in general probably will require reimplementing bits of importlib in my own code and that's something I'd prefer to avoid. The alternative appears to be messing with sys.modules when I run into this problem, which might cause other problem.

BTW. The lack of __spec__ on typing.io and typing.re is not a problem for me, I can use the machinery I already have to insert edges for C extensions to do the right thing for these modules as well. 

[1] https://modulegraph.readthedocs.io/en/latest/