A FEW things seem deeply worrying to state Del. Charles D. Poindexter (R-Franklin), who represents a rural district in southwestern Virginia. One is mussels of the zebra and quagga variety. Another is immigrants, especially refugees. In both cases, Mr. Poindexter appears fearful that Virginia is suffering a foreign infestation.

The mollusks that so disconcert Mr. Poindexter are freshwater bivalves native to Eastern Europe, whose foothold in Virginia waters may be a nuisance to local water treatment facilities. The immigrants who concern him are refugees from Congo, Syria, Burma, El Salvador, Iraq and elsewhere, on whose resettlement in Virginia he wants detailed and individual information.

Mr. Poindexter’s resolution demanding a zebra mussel study died in committee. His bill requiring that nonprofit agencies that help resettle refugees report on their profiles and whereabouts passed both houses of the GOP-dominated General Assembly in Richmond on party-line votes. The votes reflect the dread that has gripped Republicans of refugees, asylum seekers and other immigrants in this age of rising American xenophobia.

Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) vetoed Mr. Poindexter’s bill, as well as another measure passed by the legislature that would bar Virginia localities from declaring themselves as “sanctuary cities.” Across the country, similarly immigrant-unfriendly measures have been introduced in more than half the states, including bills in Florida and elsewhere that would block any nonprofit agency that receives state subsidies from helping to resettle refugees from countries beset by terrorist groups.

Never mind that those refugees are often fleeing the very terrorist groups that have unnerved the state lawmakers, who would again victimize them by means of legislative harassment. And make no mistake, the legislation is often no more than harassment: In the case of Mr. Poindexter’s bill, most of the data he demanded on refugees resettled in Virginia is already available from the Office of Newcomer Services’ State Refugee Coordinator, a federally funded position in Richmond that tracks all refugee resettlement in the commonwealth.

A quick Google search produces the information that in the first four months of the current fiscal year, 651 refugees were resettled in Virginia — about 2 percent of the national total. The largest groups came from Iraq, Syria, Congo, El Salvador, Iran and Bhutan.

Mr. Poindexter, who likes to tell people that his family’s Virginia roots extend to 1657, hails from Franklin County, a heavily white, rural locality near Roanoke with few immigrants. No more than a relative handful of refugees have found new homes there, and it’s not immediately clear that the State Refugee Coordinator could produce the age, gender, immigrant status and resettlement locality of “each individual,” as the legislation demands. It’s hard to know what use would be served by, in effect, surveilling refugees who were already exhaustively vetted before entering the country — unless Mr. Poindexter’s intent is to make them feel as unwelcome as possible in America by harassing and ostracizing them for their “otherness.” If that is the goal, or the outcome, it is hard to think of legislation more blatantly anti-American.