importing gcp resource into terraform fails even if the resource exists

Question

I am trying to import existing gcp compute instance into with terraform import command. But I am encountering this error which says the resource does not exist while using the import command as :

 terraform import google_compute_instance.tf-instance-2 my_project_id

google_compute_instance.tf-instance-2: Import prepared!
  Prepared google_compute_instance for import
google_compute_instance.tf-instance-2: Refreshing state... [id=projects/qwiklabs-gcp-02-67a8ccc33dba/zones/us-central1-a/instances/qwiklabs-gcp-02-67a8ccc33dba]
╷
│ Error: Cannot import non-existent remote object
│
│ While attempting to import an existing object to "google_compute_instance.tf-instance-2", the provider detected that no object exists with the given id. Only pre-existing objects can be imported; check that the id is correct and that it is
│ associated with the provider's configured region or endpoint, or use "terraform apply" to create a new remote object for this resource.
╵

But when I list the available gcloud compute instances tf-instance-2(the instance I am trying to import) is there.

NAME: tf-instance-1
ZONE: us-central1-a
MACHINE_TYPE: n1-standard-1
PREEMPTIBLE:
INTERNAL_IP: 10.128.0.3
EXTERNAL_IP: 34.121.38.65
STATUS: RUNNING

NAME: tf-instance-2
ZONE: us-central1-a
MACHINE_TYPE: n1-standard-1
PREEMPTIBLE:
INTERNAL_IP: 10.128.0.2
EXTERNAL_IP: 35.184.192.60
STATUS: RUNNING

The instances that I am trying to import are automatically created by GCP's codelabs. My main.tf consists of only 3 blocs, terraform, google provider and google_compute_instance resource. Things I have tried:

• Changing the versions of terraform and google provider
• terraform init and terraform init -refconfigure before running the import commands.
• Make sure all the attributes of are instances are in terraform.

main.tf file:

terraform {
  required_providers {
    google = {
      source  = "hashicorp/google"
      version = "4.8.0"
    }
  }
}

provider "google" {
  project = var.project_id
  region  = var.region
  zone    = var.zone
}

resource "google_compute_instance" "tf-instance-2" {
  name = "tf-instance-2"
  #   id = "4193295884192005746"
  project      = var.project_id
  zone         = var.zone
  machine_type = "n1-standard-1"
  labels = {
    "goog-dm" = "qldm-10079641-937281f7192921b3"
  }
  boot_disk {
    initialize_params {
      image = "debian-10-buster-v20220118"
    }
  }
  network_interface {
    network = "default"
    access_config {

    }
  }
  allow_stopping_for_update = true
  metadata_startup_script   = <<-EOT
        #!/bin/bash
    EOT
}

Answer 1

According to the import documentation for google_compute_instance:

Instances can be imported using any of these accepted formats:

$ terraform import google_compute_instance.default projects/{{project}}/zones/{{zone}}/instances/{{name}}
$ terraform import google_compute_instance.default {{project}}/{{zone}}/{{name}}
$ terraform import google_compute_instance.default {{name}}

name would probably be easiest here, and so we can modify the import command to target it accordingly:

terraform import google_compute_instance.tf-instance-2 tf-instance-2