Code help on launching an import from within a plugin

A little more information, hopefully it will stir some thoughts. I have tried various permutations of this and this is where I stand.

I have a path variable that contains the path to my staging directory. It looks like this -
path_variable = ‘/Volumes/share/tempmusic/artist/album’

That directory holds the files that I would like to import. I am calling the function like this -
import_files(lib, path_variable, None)

Note that I am setting the query parameter to None. When I call this function, it is kicking off the import, but it appears that it is starting an import at my root directory (‘/’). If I cancel and try again, it pops up and says that it is “Resuming interrupted import of /”

In my mind that means I am not specifying the path variable correctly. Could it be that it requires it to be in another format (either literally or variable type)?

Maybe there is another way to invoke the import function and I am way off base here, but it seems to be a valid path to take. Thanks in advance for any insight you can share.