This is an issue that both Calvinists and non-Calvinist challenge each other with. The challenge is different depending on how you think God saves people.
Calvinists believe that God decides before the foundation of the world who he is going to save, and he does so for his own good pleasure. It has nothing to do with anything about the person. He doesn't look ahead and choose people based on his foreknowledge of their belief or behavior. He just makes a unilateral decision to save people. Then he disposes the world in such a way that whoever he decides to save will eventually comes to faith in Jesus.
Here's the challenge for Calvinists: If God determines who he will save and who he won't, and God always gets his way, then what's the point in praying for anybody's salvation? We can't change God's sovereign will. He decided what he was going to do before we were even born. Whether God chooses to save somebody or not, our prayer shouldn't make any difference.
My answer is basically the same as my answer to the question of why we should evangelize if God determines who will be saved. It's because God doesn't just determine the end result. He also determines how that end result will get accomplished. The reason people come to believe in Jesus is because somebody preached the gospel to them. The preaching of the gospel is part of the means through which God brings about conversion. And the fact that we evangelize is also determined by God because he's sovereign over everything that happens.
In the same way, God may determine, for his own glory, to act in answer to prayers, and he may plan to do so from the foundation of the world. The prayers themselves may be part of what God decrees to happen, and God plans before he even creates the world, that he will act in answer to those prayers. So it makes all the sense in the world to pray for people's salvation given the Calvinistic belief that God is sovereign in salvation.
Here's the challenge for non-Calvinists: If God loves all people equally, and equally wants to save them all, then we should expect that God has exhausted all effort to save them short of violating their free will. With that being the case, what is the point in praying for their salvation? God has already done all he is willing to do. If he has not done all he is willing to do, then why not if he wants to save everybody? In a syngergistic model of salvation where God does his part in offering the gift of salvation, and it remains for us to do our in accepting the gift, it doesn't seem like there would be anything left for God to do except make the person willing to accept the gospel, which God supposedly never does because that would violate our free will. If you deny irresistable grace, then God can't actually accomplish saving somebody without that person's cooperation. So God can't actually answer your prayer for somebody's salvation. He can only try.
A non-Calvinist could give a similar answer that I gave. They could say that God knows we're going to pray for somebody's salvation, so he withholds whatever effort he would otherwise have made toward getting somebody saved until we pray. Then he could be said to have exerted whatever effort toward somebody's salvation in answer to that prayer. That is a possibility, but I've never heard a non-Calvinist put it like that.
I often hear non-Calvinists say the reason God doesn't perform spectacular miracles or do whatever he can to save people is because he knows they wouldn't repent even if they saw a miracle. Only people who would repent get to see the miracles. They may be right. It seems to be implicit in this sort of statement, though, that everybody who would embrace the gospel under any circumstances, God does bring about the necessary circumstances for those people. For anybody who God knows would not embrace the gospel, there's no reason to bring about any circumstances we think might lead to their conversion. God knows it wouldn't.
On the surface, I think that's a reasonable response, but it's not without some snags. For example, Jesus said in Matthew 11:21 that if the miracles that were performed in Chorazin and Bethsaida were also performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented. But the miracles were not performed, and they did not repent. This seems to cast doubt on whether God does everything that could have been done to save people.
I suppose there are a lot of responses a non-Calvinist could give to the issues raised. To a certain degree, we just have to admit we don't know why God does or doesn't do things the way we think he should or would like for him to. I don't think there's anything wrong with just saying, "I don't know," and trusting God anyway.
But I do think the problem non-Calvinists face is a little thornier than the problem Calvinists face when it comes to praying for somebody's salvation.
AN AFTERTHOUGHT: I am so disappointed! I heard a sermon a long time ago, I think by Brian Borgman, where he used Isaiah 37 as an example of where God did something in answer to prayer, yet the whole thing was planned long before the prayer was ever uttered. Hezekiah prayed that God would save Israel from Sennacherib, the king of Assyria (verses 14-20). In verse 21, God said, "Because you have prayed to me concerning Sennacherib king of Assyria. . ." then it launches into a judgment against Sennacherib in which 185,000 Assyrian soldiers die, and Sennacherib eventually dies. In verse 26, it says, "Have you not heard that I determined it long ago? I planned from days of old what now I bring to pass." The sermon I listened to said God planned the judgment against Sennacherib long ago, yet he brings it about in answer to Hezekiah's prayer. This was meant to be an example of how praying is consistent with, and included in, God's eternal decree. I was going to use this as an example until I read it more carefully.
When it says God planned the whole thing long ago, it wasn't talking about the judgment against Sennacherib and Assyria. Rather, it was talking about all the terrible things Assyria did to other nations. There is nothing in this passage that says God planned long ago to judge Assyria in answer to Hezekiah's prayer, so it's not a good proof text for that sort of thing. It is, however, a good proof text that God does decree evil, which I talked more about here.
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