You asked why pray to saints, why not pray just to Jesus. So that question was answered - or, at least, an answer was attempted.
In response to the answer to the question you raised, you raise the issue of praying to people who "have gone before". And you seem to suggest that the example of Paul asking for the prayers of others is irrelevant because those others were "alive on the earth" at the time of his asking.
Now that may be a perfectly good objection to praying to the saints in heaven, but it is completely irrelevant response to the answer to your initial question, which was about asking for the prayers of others.
In fact, by your changing the subject, you delay our getting to know if you thought tht was a decent answer or not. I'm sorry, but I think of that as "Bait and Switch". It's not a tactic for straightforward conversation for conversation that explores and understands differences. It is more combative than discursive in nature. It is obfuscatory and confuses two issues and pretty much assures that the conversation will not move forward. And it risks raising the ambient temperature by calling into question the reason for the initial inquiry. Are you interested our thinking on why it is good to ask for intercessions, or are you rather, when it comes to Catholics praying to the Saints, going to throw up one objection after another like artillery shells thinking, or seeming to think, that if one shell misses another may hit and the main thing is to keep the barrage up and the enemy's head down?
Despite possible appearances, I don't mean this personally. I don't know you from Adam and recall no previous interaction. The lack of acknowledgment of the answer given and the changing of the question just stuck out like a doily in a midden.
The answer was (to paraphrase) was “we can pray to Jesus, but we also pray to saints.”
The problem you have is that you were not able to infer from my next statements that I don’t agree with that answer. there is no evidenceIf I have to spell it out for you more clearly that I don’t agree with their answer, by stating that I don’t believe in praying to Christians who have died and are no longer among the living on earth, then I will clearly state it for you by saying so.