ETA: I missed the "to" in your question, and I see it now, lol, so the above may seem confusing. Also, I admit that question makes a lot more sense to me than without the "to"
But, still, either way, they're narrating to someone. Who is it?
When the story is in the past, it's in the past - it's a lot less inherently strange that a person would reflect on and recount (to a reader) something that happened in the past. Whereas in the present, that person would be experiencing the story, not narrating it, reflecting upon it, describing it to someone else.
Perhaps it would have been clearer if I'd phrased my question as "why on earth is this person narrating their present experience to anyone, rather than just living it?" When I am in the midst of a heightened emotional moment or a violent struggle, I'm not typically also recounting it in carefully crafted sentences with insightful metaphors.
It's all fairly artificial; all crafted narratives are, and so it is rather fine and probably an overstatement to say categorically "I dislike present-tense, first-person because X and like past-tense, first-person because Y." As I said, I wouldn't dismiss a story out of hand because of this one thing. But I tend not to find in such narratives the immediacy that some experience; rather, I experience a heightened sense of detachment, and I can only suppose it's because it makes no sense that a story would be narrated this way, as it happens, by the person it is happening to.
ETA: Here's another thought.
Jane Eyre, one of the most effective and affecting first-person narratives I know of, is mostly narrated in the past tense, from the perspective of a decade or so on, after all the turbulent events of the book have settled in their contented end. But there are a few places where the narrative leaps into present tense for a paragraph or two. And in those places, I do experience the immediacy - it's very affecting, and it ups the pace and the urgency of what is happening in those moments.
But it's only a few paragraphs, for effect. I don't think the effect would be nearly as powerful if the narrative were told entirely this way. Indeed I think it would be exhausting. One needs the distance of time and reflection to tell a story about something transformative that happens to oneself.
Once again, only my opinion, and not at all categorical - you all should tell your stories as they seem most powerful to you, and trust your readers to come along on your journey. Also, I'd be delighted to be bowled over by a counterexample, and if it happens, or if I think of one, I promise to come back to this thread and acknowledge it.