What is this guy smoking? Has he ever been to a pizzeria, the kitchen of a restaurant (any cuisine) or seen who does the landscaping in suburbia in the downstate area? Mostly Mexicans and Ecuadorians!
Downstate has a very wealthy economy thanks to finance and fashion. Upstate is appalachia with worse weather.
Maybe the answer to your question is in the first sentence of the article. The sentence right before the one you chose to quote.
For its size, New York gets a disproportionately low number of illegal aliens.
He never said there aren't illegal aliens in New York. He said there were proportionally less in New York than in other states.
That doesn't mean that New York doesn't have illegal aliens, it just means that they have less than other parts of the country.
However, the legislature and the governor appear to be determined to change that and encourage even more illegal aliens to come to New York state.
What he was telling you is that it is likely to be getting worse soon, so if you think it is bad now, you're likely going to be even less happy with the situation in the not so distant future.