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As to why aliens have never visited/contacted us:
We're not interesting enough or we're too far off the beaten track to make it worthwhile.  I have a feeling any serious undertaking would most likely go toward the galactic centre, where there seems to be a lot more fun stuff happening.   I know I'd probably do the same, given the chance.

There's an even better reason than that, IMO. They might just simply not notice us. Imagine if someone throws a single grain of sand  somewhere onto a million square mile asphalt parking lot, and asks you to find it. ;-)

On the other hand, we've been looking for other planets for a while now and haven't actually seen any. The only way we know for sure that a star might have planets is by observing minor gravitational effects that indicate other objects. So while we know it's very likely that there are planets around certain stars, all we know is that something is there, with no indication whether it's habitable or some kind of hellhole.
And until we can actually see and test other planets, it's hardly worth making the enormous effort to go there.

Could be all the aliens within reach just have the same problems we do. There could be a highly advanced civilization just 20 light years away who would love to meet us, but have governments that don't want to fund it, for all we know.

Then again, maybe the aliens just aren't interested. ;-)

I'd say it's more likely though that the only way aliens are going to find us is by accident, some ginormous navigational blunder on their way somewhere else. We barely exist by the size standards of just our galaxy, let alone the universe as a whole. For all intents and purposes, we're pretty much invisible and extraordinarily insignificant compared to everything else out there.

Could also be that there are thousands of alien races out there, all hanging out with each other, but we're simply not invited because we're not cool enough to be part of their clique. ;-)

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